All-American Dinner Rolls

Combine the yeast, 1 cup warm water and 1 Tablespoon of sugar in the bottom of the bowl of your mixer. Mine is a Bosch, with dough hooks. Let this sit until the yeast is bubbly.

While that is happening prepare the shortening. Scoop the shortening into your glass measuring cup, and soften it in the microwave for about a minute. Don’t make it too hot and liquid-ey or you will kill the yeast that you are preparing.

Next, add the shortening, the remaining sugar, salt, and another cup of warm water to the yeast mixture. Use your mixer to combine all the ingredients. Just get them mixed up, they really don’t have to be smooth.

Finally, add the eggs and the remaining cup of warm water. Add one cup of flour at a time after you start your mixer. The dough needs to be pretty sticky, so don’t use too much flour.

When you’re done scraping all the flour into the bowl without sending up a flour dust cloud, set the timer for 10 minutes and set your mixer on knead. This is very important – you need to make sure you knead that dough for a full 10 minutes.

Strangely enough, I have done this so many times that I can hear the gluten in my dough activate because the sound of the machine changes, and not more than another minute goes by and then the timer goes off.

Spray a large bowl with non-stick spray and get the dough out of your mixing bowl. Because your dough is sticky, use a spatula and scrape it out into your large mixing bowl.

Sprinkle the top of the dough with a bit of flour, and cover with a towel. Place the bowl of dough in the refrigerator and allow to chill overnight if you can. I like mine to chill but I never have more than 4 hours to give it. The dough handles and performs better when chilled. If you don’t have the time, it still all works out. Go straight to preparing the dough.

Now, to make your croissants, have a pizza cutter ready, and 1/2 cup of butter completely melted in a bowl.

Divide the dough in the bowl into four equal sections. Take ¼ of the dough out onto a floured surface and with a rolling pin, smooth the dough out into a circle about the size of a pie crust.

Pour a fourth of the melted butter on top of the first dough section and spread it to the edges, covering equally.

With the pizza cutter, cut the circle of dough into eight pie-shaped pieces. Roll each piece from the wide end to the center point (thus creating your crescent rolls). Move rolls to a baking sheet, and curl the points in just a bit towards each other. Repeat with each triangular piece of dough.

Repeat the whole process over with the other three sections of dough and the rest of the butter until you have 32 rolls on your sprayed baking sheets. I need three baking sheets for this recipe.

Cover your rolls and baking sheets with a towel and allow them to raise to a nice fluffy size.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees F for 8 minutes or just until golden brown. Sometimes that first batch needs a bit more time than 8 minutes, the rest don’t usually.