Skip to recipe

Open full page ↗

Dough Products

American Dinner Rolls (Soft Pull-Apart Rolls)

Soft, slightly sweet, buttery yeast rolls baked snugly together in one tin so they pull apart with soft sides: the bread basket at an American Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Made with milk, butter and an egg, proved twice and baked to 88–90°C so they stay tender. Variations, a bread machine note and a short history below.

  • Serves 16
  • Makes 16
  • Hands-on 30 min
  • Rise 2–2½ hrs
  • Bake 20–25 min
  • Freeze for up to 1 month
  • American

Tips for perfect rolls ↓ · Variations ↓ · Bread machine ↓

Yeast cakes and Boston cooking school rolls: a little history ↓

Method

  1. Weigh the two flours into a large bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer). Stir in the 7 g of fast-action dried yeast on one side and the 40 g of sugar and 9 g of salt on the other.

  2. Warm the 240 ml of milk and 60 ml of water together until just lukewarm (about 30°C / 86°F; it should feel barely warm on your wrist), beat in the egg, and pour into the flour. Mix to a soft, shaggy dough with no dry flour left.

  3. Add the soft butter and knead for about 10 minutes by hand (or 6–8 minutes with a dough hook on low to medium speed), until the dough is smooth, soft and springy, and passes the windowpane test: a small piece stretches thin enough to let light through without tearing. It should feel tacky but not stick to your hands; resist adding much flour.

  4. Shape into a ball, put it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave in a warm place for 1 to 1½ hours, until doubled in size. A floured finger pressed into it should leave a dent that fills back only slowly.

  5. Grease a 23 × 33 cm (9 × 13 in) baking tin (or two 20 cm / 8 in round cake tins). Tip the dough out, press out the largest bubbles and divide it into 16 equal pieces of about 60 g (2 oz); weighing them gives even rolls that bake at the same rate.

  6. Shape each piece into a tight ball: fold the edges into the middle, turn it seam-side down, then cup your hand over it and roll it in small circles on an unfloured worktop until smooth and taut. Set the balls in the tin in 4 rows of 4, a little apart.

  7. Cover and prove for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until puffy and pressed together, with no gaps left between them. Meanwhile heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan), gas mark 4, 350°F, with a shelf in the middle.

  8. Bake for 20–25 minutes, until a deep golden brown on top. Cover loosely with foil after 15 minutes if they are browning too fast. They are done when the middle roll reads 88–90°C (190–195°F) on a probe thermometer.

  9. Brush the hot tops with the 20 g of melted butter, leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Serve warm, pulled apart at the table.

Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.

Rate this recipe

Tried it? Rate it.

The readers’ average appears here once 5 readers have rated it.

One vote per recipe per browser, and you can change it. We keep only the stars: no name, e-mail or IP address. How ratings work

Tips for perfect rolls

  1. Weigh, don’t scoop. King Arthur Baking counts a cup of all-purpose flour as 120 g, but a cup scooped straight from the bag holds noticeably more, so the grams are the real recipe. Use digital scales for flour, yeast, salt and liquids (1 ml of water or milk weighs about 1 g). The US cup amounts in the US view are a guide.
  2. American flour, British flour. American all-purpose flour sits between British plain flour and strong bread flour in protein, so we mix the two. Bread flour (strong flour) is right for bagels, which need a strong, chewy dough.
  3. Yeast. Fast-action dried yeast is the same thing as American instant yeast: stir it straight into the flour. One 7 g sachet equals one US ¼ oz packet (2¼ tsp). With active dry yeast, dissolve it in the lukewarm liquid first; with fresh yeast, use about 17–20 g, crumbled into the liquid.
  4. Lukewarm, never hot. Liquid at about 30°C (86°F) feels just warm on your wrist. Hot liquid kills yeast; a cool dough simply takes longer.
  5. Knead until it passes the windowpane test. Stretch a small piece of kneaded dough gently between your fingers. If it thins to a translucent sheet without tearing, the gluten is ready; if it tears, knead for 2 minutes more and test again.
  6. Sweet doughs are slow. Sugar, butter and eggs slow the yeast, so soft dinner rolls and Hawaiian rolls take longer to rise than plain bread. Judge each rise by the look and feel of the dough, not the clock: a floured fingertip dent should fill back slowly.
  7. Pack them close for soft sides. Rolls baked touching in one tin steam each other and stay soft and pale where they join; rolls baked apart get a crust all round.
  8. Is it done?. Soft, enriched rolls are done at 88–90°C (190–195°F) in the centre of the middle roll; King Arthur Baking found they dry out if taken further. Bagels are judged by a deep golden-brown colour.

Variations

4 ways to change the main recipe. Each uses the same method unless it says otherwise.

Make ahead for a holiday dinner

Shape the rolls into the tin, cover tightly and refrigerate for up to 24 hours. Take them out 1–2 hours before baking, until puffy, then bake as above. Or bake them a day ahead, cool, wrap the tin in foil and reheat in the foil for 10–15 minutes.

Cloverleaf rolls

Divide each 60 g piece into 3 small balls and set them together in a greased muffin tin, 3 to a cup (12 cups take 12 rolls; bake the rest in a small tin). Prove until puffy and bake for 15–18 minutes.

Butter crescents

Divide the dough in half and roll each half into a 30 cm (12 in) circle. Spread each with 25 g (2 tbsp) very soft butter, cut into 8 wedges and roll each up from the wide end. Set on lined trays, point underneath, prove until puffy and bake for 12–15 minutes at 190°C (170°C fan), gas mark 5, 375°F.

Make it in a bread machine (dough cycle)

Put everything in the pan in the order your manual gives: Panasonic machines want the yeast first, then the flour and other dry ingredients, with the liquid last; most other makes want the liquid first and the yeast last, on top of the flour. Use cool milk and water (the machine warms the dough), cut the butter into small pieces and beat the egg into the milk. Choose the Dough programme and start it straight away: never use the delay timer with milk or egg. The full recipe suits a large (2 lb, 900 g–1 kg loaf) machine; for a 1.5 lb machine make three-quarters, and for a compact 1 lb machine (about 250 g flour, such as the Panasonic SD-PN100) make half. When it ends, shape the rolls, prove and bake as above. King Arthur Baking mixes its soft white dinner rolls this way, and Allrecipes’ Sweet Dinner Rolls are made on the Dough cycle.

Bread machines: the dough cycle for rolls → · Kneading and proving techniques →

See also

Chef’s notes

  • American all-purpose flour has a little more protein than British plain flour, so we use half strong white bread flour and half plain flour to match it. In the US, use 500 g (4 cups) of all-purpose flour instead of the two.
  • Baked close together, the rolls steam each other: the sides stay soft and white and the tops brown. For crustier sides, bake them 5 cm (2 in) apart on a lined tray for 15–18 minutes.
  • Bake to 88–90°C (190–195°F), not higher: King Arthur Baking found that soft, enriched rolls are fully baked at about 88°C and go dry if baked hotter.
  • They keep, wrapped, for 2–3 days, and freeze for up to 1 month. Warm through, wrapped in foil, for 10 minutes at 160°C (140°C fan), gas mark 3, 325°F.

A little history

American home bakers got reliable yeast in the late 19th century: Charles and Maximilian Fleischmann founded their yeast company in Cincinnati in 1868, and compressed fresh yeast in small foil-wrapped cakes was its original product. Old American recipes, Fannie Farmer’s among them, ask for “1 yeast cake”.

Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (first published in 1896; quoted here from the 1910 revised edition) gives a recipe for “Salad or Dinner Rolls” made with the same scalded milk, butter, sugar and yeast cake as her Parker House rolls, placed closely in a buttered pan and baked in a hot oven for twelve to fifteen minutes. She adds that “crescents, braids, twists, bow-knots, clover leaves, and other fancy shapes” can be made from the same dough.

Today dinner rolls belong above all to Thanksgiving: in Google Trends data for the United States, searches for “dinner rolls recipe” peak every November. On Allrecipes, Sweet Dinner Rolls, a bread-machine dough shaped into crescents, has more than 3,200 ratings.

Sources for these notes

For the history above and the tips for perfect rolls.

How this recipe was developed

We compared the top-rated recipes below and wrote our own, in grams with US cups.

  • Milk, butter, sugar and egg. King Arthur Baking’s soft dinner rolls use milk and water with about 11% butter and 10% sugar (by weight of flour); Allrecipes’ Sweet Dinner Rolls add an egg. Ours has 12% butter, 8% sugar, 60% milk and water, and an egg.
  • Flour to match American all-purpose. All the American recipes use all-purpose flour; we use half British strong and half plain flour to match its protein.
  • Packed in one tin. King Arthur bakes 16 rolls in a 9 × 13 in (23 × 33 cm) pan until they touch; Fannie Farmer placed hers “closely in buttered pan”. We do the same, with 60 g pieces.
  • Bake gently. King Arthur bakes at 350°F (180°C) for 20–25 minutes and treats 190°F (88°C) as the benchmark for soft rolls. We bake at 180°C (160°C fan) to 88–90°C.

Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):

This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.

Useful kit

  • Digital kitchen scales: weighs flour, liquids, yeast and salt to the gram, and lets you divide the dough into even rolls. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Rectangular baking tin, 23 × 33 cm (9 × 13 in): the standard tin for a tray of 16 pull-apart rolls. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Instant-read thermometer: the sure way to tell when soft rolls are done. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Plastic dough scraper: for sticky doughs, dividing and keeping the worktop clean. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Spider skimmer: lifts bagels out of the boiling water without tearing them. Amazon UK · Amazon US

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Shopping list for 16 portions

Dairy & eggs

Baking

Oils, vinegars & sauces

Store cupboard (check you have)