Chasing the perfect dinner roll

By Frank Whitman

Rolls at the Parker House Hotel in Boston

This year, I’ve been chasing the grail of the perfect dinner roll: an irresistible, golden-brown, buttery-soft nugget of yeast-raised bread.  It might be a Parker House roll, a subset of the genre with a special fold and extra butter or maybe just a good, old-fashioned, dome-topped dinner roll.  

The American Bounty restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America has my favorites. It’s worth a trip to Hyde Park just for the rolls, but the student-prepared meal will be memorable too.  

My search has taken me down the rabbit hole of social media videos.  Bread baking is a well-populated category of internet time-suck that features all manner of bakers kneading all types of dough.

Dinner Rolls at the American Bounty Restaurant

On a CIA video one of the chef instructors gives a quick lesson in how my dream rolls are made. Unfortunately, it’s not a recipe, just a teaser. There is one scene where he is chucking chunks of butter into a dough-filled mixer, which is how you make brioche, a butter-enriched French classic that is another subset of the dinner roll universe.

My current internet muse is Innkeeper Caroline who works at an Inn in the Midwest (Michigan I think.)  She’s the real deal – at her baker’s bench by 4:30 in the morning with her hair wrapped in a head band and bun, arms dusted with flour and a professional apron. She cranks away making coffee cakes, the local favorite limpa bread, cinnamon rolls, pies (mostly cherry), desserts for the Inn’s restaurant, cookies for the “house guests” and, of course, dinner rolls. 

Her rolls look lovely, just what I want, puffy and golden.  Rather than shaping them into plump round break-apart rolls, she puts 4 one-ounce balls in souffle ramekins for the final proof and bake. The result, a dish with four tiny rolls bulging out of the top for each restaurant table.

Sadly, no recipes are given, but she does chat about what she’s making, the source of her recipe inspiration and which audio book is on play during the more boring moments.  A full day of  her work is compressed into just a few minutes of video, but I can’t tear my eyes away.

My Homemade Parker House Rolls

There are lots of folks who make dinner rolls and do give the recipes.  They’re all essentially the same: flour, yeast, milk, sugar and eggs, what’s known in the trade as a rich dough.  Sometimes the recipe is right “below” and a screen shot will keep it for further study, other times the measurements are spoken as the process progresses, but then you have to take notes. On one, they had a shot of all the ingredients with their amounts superimposed over each. That was great until the cook reached in with a container and said, “Oops, I forgot the sugar.”  A genuine, if not polished performance.

Some of the bakers are too neat and clean to be true. Baking is messy, and if there aren’t a few spots and some flour on the apron, I’m not convinced.  Some are home bakers that have turned their hobby into a business.

Stylishly dressed Ainsley Durose makes beautiful tarts and breads in her impossibly small Paris kitchen with a countertop oven. No American dinner rolls here, although she does make a baguette, but this is the nature of scrolling.  One thing leads to another and time flies by.

What I’m really seeking are the hows. How long to mix, how long to knead, how long to proof, how to shape, and how long for the second proof.

Baking is the science of measurement, method, and temperature. But it still takes experience to get it just right. The feel and touch of the dough can only be gained by repetition.

I just have to keep baking until I get it right. Extra rolls anyone?