Dough Products
Parker House Rolls
Boston’s famous folded dinner rolls from the Parker House hotel: a soft, buttery milk dough, each roll brushed with melted butter and folded over like a purse, baked snugly in one tin, then brushed with more butter and a pinch of flaky salt. Variations, a bread machine note and a short history below.
- Serves 16
- Makes 16
- Hands-on 40 min
- Rise 2–2½ hrs
- Bake 20–25 min
- Freeze for up to 1 month
- American (Boston)
Tips for perfect rolls ↓ · Variations ↓ · Bread machine ↓
Boston’s Parker House hotel in the 1870s: a little history ↓
Method
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.
Warm the 275 ml of milk until just lukewarm (about 30°C / 86°F), beat in the egg and pour into the flour. Mix to a soft, shaggy dough with no dry flour left.
Add the soft butter and knead for about 10 minutes by hand (or 7–8 minutes with a dough hook on low to medium speed), until smooth, springy and slightly tacky, and the dough passes the windowpane test.
Put it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave in a warm place for 1 to 1½ hours, until about doubled. When you press it with a floured knuckle, the dent should spring back slowly.
Grease a 23 × 33 cm (9 × 13 in) baking tin with a little of the melted butter. Tip out the dough, press out the largest bubbles and divide it into 16 pieces of about 60 g (2 oz). Roll each into a tight ball, cover and leave for 10 minutes so the dough relaxes and does not spring back when you shape it.
Roll each ball into an oval about 10 × 7 cm (4 × 2¾ in) and 8 mm (⅓ in) thick. Press a crease across the middle with the back of a knife, brush the oval with melted butter, then fold it over along the crease so the top half stops just short of the bottom edge. Press the edges lightly together.
Set the rolls folded-edge down in the tin, in 4 rows of 4, snugly against each other: packed in like this they hold their folds as they rise. Cover and prove for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until puffy but not quite doubled. Meanwhile heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan), gas mark 4, 350°F.
Bake for 20–25 minutes, until golden brown and a probe in the middle roll reads 88–90°C (190–195°F).
Brush the hot rolls with the rest of the melted butter and scatter with a pinch of flaky salt, if you like. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then lift out onto a rack. Serve warm, pulled apart.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
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Tips for perfect rolls
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
The 19th-century way: cut, crease and fold
As in Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book: roll the risen dough out 8 mm (⅓ in) thick and cut 7 cm (2¾ in) rounds with a floured cutter. Press a crease across each with the floured handle of a wooden spoon, brush one half with melted butter, fold and press the edges together. Set 2.5 cm (1 in) apart on a buttered tray, prove until puffy and bake for 15–18 minutes.
Garlic and herb butter rolls
Stir 1 crushed garlic clove and 1 tbsp each chopped parsley and chives into the melted butter before brushing and folding, and brush the hot rolls with the rest.
Make ahead: freeze unbaked
Shape and fold the rolls into a foil tin, cover tightly and freeze for up to 1 month. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then leave at room temperature for 1½–2 hours, until puffy, and bake as above.
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, beat the egg into it and add the soft butter in pieces. 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, rest the dough for 10 minutes, then divide, butter, fold, prove and bake as above.
Bread machines: the dough cycle for rolls → · Kneading and proving techniques →
See also
- American Dinner Rolls — soft pull-apart yeast rolls
- Hawaiian Sweet Rolls — soft, sweet pineapple rolls
- Bagels — boiled, then baked: chewy New York-style bagels
- Bread Rolls White (Soft Rolls and Baps) — British soft white rolls and floury baps
- Milk Bread Rolls — Japanese-style tangzhong rolls, the softest of all
- Brioche Buns — rich, buttery burger buns
- Bread Rolls (Crusty) — lean, crusty white rolls baked with steam
- Kneading and proving techniques — by hand, mixer, bread machine or no-knead; the windowpane and poke tests
- Bread machines — choosing one, settings, and the dough cycle for rolls
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.
- The fold works because of the butter in it: it keeps the two layers apart as the roll bakes, so each one opens like a little purse. Pressing the rolls close together in the tin stops them unfolding.
- King Arthur Baking found the original method (rounds cut out, buttered and folded, baked apart) messy, with rolls that popped open in the oven; we give it as a variation.
- They keep, wrapped, for 2 days, and freeze for up to 1 month. Warm through, wrapped in foil, for 10–15 minutes at 160°C (140°C fan), gas mark 3, 325°F.
A little history
The Parker House roll is named after the Parker House hotel in Boston, which Harvey D. Parker opened on School Street in October 1855 and which still trades as the Omni Parker House. A City of Boston landmark study places the roll’s development in the time of the French chef Augustine François Anezin, who ran the kitchen from 1865 until his death in 1881, and describes it as a sponge-based, slightly sweet dinner roll.
The hotel’s historian, Susan Wilson, told Allrecipes that the rolls were created in the 1870s by a German baker at the hotel named Ward, at a time when most bread was hard inside and out. The popular story that the fold came from an angry cook throwing dough has never been confirmed, she says.
The recipe spread through the cookbooks of the Boston Cooking School, by Mary Lincoln (copyright 1883) and Fannie Farmer. Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (first published 1896; quoted from the 1910 edition) cuts the dough with a biscuit cutter, makes a crease with “the handle of a case knife”, brushes half of each piece with melted butter, then says “fold, and press edges together”.
Sources for these notes
For the history above and the tips for perfect rolls.
- City of Boston Landmarks Commission: The Parker House, study report (hotel opened 8 October 1855; chef Augustine François Anezin, 1865–1881; the Parker House roll; Mary Lincoln 1883, Fannie Farmer)
- Allrecipes: “How the Parker House Roll Became America’s Favorite Dinner Roll” (interview with Omni Parker House historian Susan Wilson: the baker Ward, 1870s; the thrown-dough story unconfirmed)
- Wikipedia: Parker House roll (invented at the Parker House Hotel in the 1870s; recipes in cookbooks from the 1880s; Fannie Farmer 1896)
- Fannie Merritt Farmer, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Project Gutenberg text of the 1910 revised edition, copyright 1896): “Parker House Rolls”
- King Arthur Baking: Parker House Rolls (the original cut-and-fold method popped open; rectangles as served at the Omni Parker House today)
- King Arthur Baking: Ingredient weight chart (1 cup all-purpose flour = 120 g)
- King Arthur Baking: What is the windowpane test for bread dough? (2022)
- King Arthur Baking (PJ Hamel): Using a thermometer with yeast bread (2017)
How this recipe was developed
Parker House rolls are the classic American folded butter roll. We compared modern tested recipes with Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School version and wrote our own.
- A rich milk dough. King Arthur Baking and Serious Eats both use milk, an egg, about 9–11% sugar and 11–12% butter in the dough. Ours has 8% sugar and 10% butter, with half strong and half plain flour.
- Butter, fold, pack. Serious Eats rests the balls for 10 minutes, stretches, butters and folds them, and packs them snugly in a 9 × 13 in pan; King Arthur found loose, cut-out rounds popped open. We use the packed method and give Fannie Farmer’s cut-and-fold rounds as a variation.
- Bake and butter. Both bake at 350°F (180°C); Serious Eats to 190°F (87°C), then brushes with butter and flaky salt. We do the same.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
- King Arthur Baking (PJ Hamel): Parker House Rolls
- Serious Eats (Nicole Hopper): Parker House Rolls (5.0/5 from 2 ratings)
- Allrecipes (John Mitzewich (Chef John)): Chef John’s Parker House Rolls (4.7/5 from 12 ratings)
- Fannie Merritt Farmer: The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1910 revised edition, copyright 1896)
- King Arthur Baking (PJ Hamel): Using a thermometer with yeast bread (2017)
- King Arthur Baking: What is the windowpane test for bread dough? (2022)
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
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