60-Minute Dinner Rolls (Yes,fresh baked rolls in one hour!)

April Showers have arrived, more in the form of  heavy downpours.  It's all good for our local agriculture, and I love soup on a rainy day.   I've been cleaning out the refrigerator and pantry, and I had some cremini mushrooms that had to be either used-- or tossed.   I settled on making one of my favorite recipes for  Golden Cream of Mushroom Soup.   (The soup gets it's golden color from a little tomato paste and the darker color of the cremini mushrooms.) A salad is always a great side dish, with soup.  But, fresh baked bread is something that makes it even better. 

I found this recipe on my friend's blog, Monica, from "Lick the Bowl Good", while searching for a quick bread recipe.   I decided to cut the recipe in half, because Craig and I don't need two dozen freshly baked rolls to tempt us. 

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I didn't photograph the process of making these rolls, because I wasn't sure how they'd turn out.  (In retrospect, I should have grabbed my camera.  Sorry about that.)  They were really easy to make, using a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, with a dough hook.  A few of the  "secrets" is to heat up the mixing bowl, get the liquid ingredients to about 110F.  I also like to turn on my oven to "warm" for just a few minutes-- then turn it off.  This makes the perfect incubator to speed up the proofing of the dough.

The dough rose in about 20 minutes!  The dough had a texture similar to my German Rohr Nudeln (sweet rolls with jelly).   You can make clover leaf rolls, but I prefer to cut my dough into square pieces and then shape them into roundish rolls-- well, just click here if you want to see how I shape them. 

I took no more than 10 minutes for me to shape the rolls, and then I covered them for about 15 minutes.  While the oven preheated, I set the rolls on top of my stove.  The warmth of the oven helped to proof the dough.

They baked to a lovely golden brown in about 15 minutes.  I brushed a little melted butter on them, then carefully set them on a cooling rack.

I'm not kidding-- in one hour, I baked homemade rolls and made the soup.  Ta-da!

 

Hot soup and freshly baked rolls, homemade and not from a can-- how comforting is that?!

Fluffy and tender...

TASTING NOTES:  I've made a few versions of dinner rolls, and have posted several on my blog.  These rolls are now my favorite "go to" recipe.  The texture is very tender, and they are just so darn easy to make.  I'm going to play around with the recipe to come up with a whole wheat version.  My son will be sad to see that he missed out on these, because soup and fresh bread is one of his favorite meals.   I'll just have to make it for him on his next day off.  My pleasure!  (Guess what's packed for my lunch box tomorrow, as it will be raining again? )

UPDATE:  I tweaked this recipe, using whole wheat flour-- plus, I decided to photograph step-by-step photos on how to make this. I'll be working on that post, and will link to it-- in the meantime, if you want a whole wheat version, the printable recipe card is at the end of this post or click here.

A printable recipe card is at the end of this post. If you can't view it, click here.