Back in February, I tweeted (and in effect Facebooked*) a request for a good potato roll recipe. Sadly I only got one response. Not so sadly, the response I got yielded my new favorite dinner rolls.

The boyfriend’s boss provided the recipe. I believe she told me that it’s her mother’s recipe. Susan, thank you for giving me such a great recipe! It’s a recipe that I will more than likely commit to memory and use for the rest of my baking days.

* I have it set up so that my tweets on Twitter are automatically posted to Facebook as status updates. A lot of people think I spend an absurd amount of time updating Facebook. I don’t. But I do write a lot of tweets.

I’ve made these rolls 3 or 4 times and it’s pretty likely I’ll make them again this weekend. Like most bread, they’re best fresh out of the oven. But these taste nearly as good as fresh when lightly reheated. Even better, they taste nearly as good as fresh when lightly reheated and 4 days old. This is what makes them the best rolls ever. It’s easy to make homemade bread that tastes wonderful fresh from the oven. It’s not so easy to make homemade bread that tastes nearly as good as fresh when it’s several days old.

These potato rolls are incredibly delicious and soft and tender and buttery and delicious and pillowy. They’re good by themselves or with a hint of butter. Make them a little larger and use them as sandwich rolls.

I did make a couple of slight modifications to the recipe I was given. The main thing I altered is the use of butter instead of shortening. I also added a little bit of honey in lieu of a little bit of sugar.

I also made a batch of these using half wheat and half white flour. I like the all white flour ones better but the wheat ones were pretty tasty as well.

Best Rolls Ever aka Potato Rolls

Yields approximately 30-36 dinner rolls

Ingredients

• 1 cup mashed potatoes (You’ll need enough potatoes to make 1 cup of mashed potatoes…)
• 2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup scalded milk (I used 2%)
• 5 to 6 cups flour (I used half bread flour and half unbleached all-purpose flour)
• 1 packet dry active yeast
• 1/2 cup lukewarm reserved potato water with 1 teaspoon sugar added to it.

Directions

1. Boil potatoes until tender. Drain water, reserving 1/2 cup for use in rolls. Finely mash potatoes and measure 1 cup for rolls. Cool mashed potatoes to nearly room temperature.
2. Dissolve yeast in the lukewarm potato water. Set aside for 5 minutes. (It should be foamy after 5 minutes.)
3. In bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment, mix together mashed potatoes, butter, eggs, sugar, honey and salt. Mix together on medium speed for about 2 minutes.
4. Add yeast mixture to lukewarm milk. Stir.
5. Add the yeast and milk mixture to the potato mixture. Mix on low speed until blended.
6. Gradually add flour (one cup at a time) until a soft dough forms.
7. Switch to the dough hook attachment on the stand mixer and knead for about 5 minutes at low speed.
8. Place dough in lightly oiled bowl. Put dough is a slightly warm place, cover it and let the dough double.
9. Punch down dough and shape into rolls. Place rolls about  1 1/2 inches apart on parchment paper lined baking sheets. I have pretty large baking sheets and I used two.
10. Sprinkle rolls with a touch of flour if desired. Let dough rise again.
11. Bake in a preheated oven set at 400 degrees for approximately 12 minutes.