I grew up in a family that overlooked rolls during the holidays. We’d either buy a pack of King’s Hawaiian bread or a tube of Pillsbury biscuits, throw those in a cloth-lined basket, and call it a day. In the past couple of years, we skipped the dinner rolls entirely. The surplus of dry leftovers at the end of every dinner made it obvious they were never a coveted item.
This makes sense to me; who would want to give up prime real estate on their Thanksgiving or Christmas plate to a cold piece of bread when there’s bubbly macaroni and cheese, creamy mashed potatoes, and herbed stuffing to load up on instead?
It made me wonder: Could rolls be redeemed if they were made from scratch? Would it even be worth it to attempt such a thing? I decided to find out by baking my own batch of Parker House rolls, the famed enriched bread rolls invented at Boston’s Parker House Hotel in the 1870s. Parker House rolls are known for being incredibly soft and feathery as well as buttery, with a signature folded shape that makes it quite easy to pry open the rolls and spread them with even more butter.
I decided to follow a recipe from King Arthur Baking. Although I am a home cook and frequent baker, I still wanted to enlist the help of some pros, so I also reached out to Martin Phillip, a baking ambassador for King Arthur Baking Company, and Kate Burr, a partner behind the Benjamin, a Hollywood restaurant that has a best-selling Parker House roll on its menu.
Like all good bakes, Phillip recommends beginning with a trusted source and following the recipe closely. “Use high-quality ingredients and attention to detail — pretend you are assembling something from Ikea — and [the rolls] will be great,” he says.
I often treat baking like cooking, measuring imprecisely and throwing in extra ingredients that sound good (too often at the expense of my bakes). This time, I actually weighed all my ingredients before delivering them to my beloved stand mixer, which got to work kneading the dough for me. Of course, if you don’t have a stand mixer, you can form the dough by hand; it will just require a little bit of extra elbow grease.
Once the dough came together into a smooth ball, I put it in a lightly oiled bowl and covered it with saran wrap and a kitchen towel and left it to rise. “A good recipe will offer timings as well as visual cues, like, ‘Set the dough to rise until doubled in size,’ or ‘When ready for the next step, the dough will be puffy and marshmallowy,’” Phillip says, advising that you should pay attention to those tips. “For under-proofed dough, the rolls might feel denser and won’t spring up as much in the oven,” Burr adds. “Over-proofed dough will lose structure and look a bit deflated; you’ll know if the surface is wrinkled.” The recipe I followed allowed for a 90-minute proofing time and I kept my eye out for an inflated dough.
Sure enough, by the end of the wait, the dough was definitely puffy like a quilted winter coat and ready to be shaped into rolls. I turned out the mound of dough on a flour-dusted surface and divided it in half. Different recipes have advice on how to shape Parker House rolls; the one I followed required pressing the dough into a large rectangle and brushing the entire thing with butter before folding it lengthwise like a sheet of paper, therefore tucking the butter neatly into the center of the roll. From there, the recipe instructed me to cut the dough into eight even pieces and place them in a baking dish, folded side down.
This is the part where, if you want equal-sized rolls, it’s essential to fold the dough as evenly as possible and measure it before making cuts. I, being an imprecise person, measured by eyeballing as I cut the rectangle into eight rolls. I figured once the rolls baked and expanded, they would surely be even enough.
Once the rolls are arranged in the pan, it’s time for a second, shorter proof (approximately 45 minutes to an hour depending on how warm your kitchen is). I let the rolls rise for the full hour and although they swelled up, they certainly did not look even. No matter, I placed them in the oven for a 25-minute bake time.
I wish you could smell the way my house smelled while the rolls baked. The aroma of yeast wafting off fresh-baked bread is comforting and intoxicating and I sniffed the air while I waited impatiently. The rolls came out lopsided, sure, but they were all evenly golden brown. I know you’re meant to wait for bread to cool slightly before diving in but I couldn’t help but tear a roll off immediately.
The enriched dough created a fluffy and feathery interior that was definitely improved with an added pat of butter. These rolls would also be perfect for sopping up excess gravy or even making sliders with leftover slices of turkey or ham.
So, is it worth it to make your own rolls from scratch this holiday season? I think so. If you have a stand mixer, there really isn’t too much active time — and even if you’re kneading the dough yourself and getting your hands dirty, that’s all part of holiday cooking. Burr agrees. “Freshly baked Parker House rolls can transform a holiday meal, offering a personal touch and that just-out-of-the-oven warmth that store-bought or canned rolls can’t match,” she says. “They’re not complicated to make, just a bit time-consuming — perfect for a special occasion when you have the whole day to cook and bake.”
And the best part of making them from scratch is the ability to experiment with new flavors or compound butters to give the rolls an extra boost. “A special butter, like something infused with pumpkin spices with a little honey, or a brown butter and toasted sage butter, are great additional ways to show that you care,” Phillips says. Even better, Phillip points out that the rolls can be made in advance by parbaking them two-thirds of the way through, wrapping them, and finishing them in the oven when it’s finally time to eat.
For me, the effort is worth the final result, which is pillowy soft and generously buttery. Although rolls will never be the star of a holiday meal, I at least want to carve out time in the future for them to be a significant supporting player. And with the minimal active time they require (especially if you have a stand mixer), I think they’re definitely worth attempting.
Lily Fossett is a freelance illustrator based in Bath, UK. She has a passion for portraying narrative in her illustrations and uses digital media to explore color and texture.
