Dinner Rolls

Dinner Rolls

For our cousin’s night dinner last week, I found a random recipe online for dinner rolls. I have done parker house type rolls before and also have done other general dinner rolls (without great success). I didn’t have any milk on hand so found a recipe that didn’t need it. Overall these rolls actually turned out to be quite the hit (nice and soft) at the dinner so decided I should save it here for future reference.

Ingredients:

  • 3-3.5 cups AP flour
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 2 Tablespoons white sugar (I only had turbinado sugar so used that)
  • 1.5 teaspoons instant yeast
  • 2 Tablespoons oil
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 Egg
  1. Mix water, yeast, and sugar. Let sit 5-10 minutes to bloom
  2. Add egg, oil, salt, and 3 cups flour. Knead until smooth and slightly sticky (can add more flour) – I did this by hand, can do in a mixer
  3. Cover the dough with damp towel and let rise for one hour or until doubled in size
  4. Grease 9 x 13 inch baking pan
  5. Punch dough down and place on lightly floured surface. Divide dough into 14-16 pieces and roll into ball.
  6. Cover and let rise and double in size again
  7. Preheat oven to 350 F
  8. Bake for 20 minutes or until browned
  9. Brush with softened butter or oil
  10. Let sit 5 minutes then move to cooling rack
Formed into balls ~ golf ball sized
~Doubled in size
Baked ~22 minutes
Brushed with melted butter

I made this recipe again and made some bigger buns for possible sandwich/burgers. They grew a bit more together than I anticipated.

Crumb from latest batch along with one use case as turkey burger bun

-StewsCat

NorCal (January 2026)

Ever since moving down to southern CA in 2024, we haven’t been back up to the Sacramento area. We really missed the food and decided to make a trek up to our old stomping grounds (both Sacramento as well as the Napa Valley area, another favorite place to visit when we lived up there) in early 2026. After living in the Sac region for so long, we had some “go to” places that we wanted to hit up.

After landing at SMF and collecting our rental vehicle, we made our way over to Davis to have some lunch before the drive out to Sonoma. The first restaurant to check off our list was Mikuni Sushi. While it is now a chain with 10 locations, it is still quite good and relatively affordable sushi and other Japanese fare. Knowing that our dinner that night may be somewhat heavier, we ordered accordingly and had some sashimi, rolls and nigiri

After lunch, we walked over to Pachamama to grab some caffeine for the slightly over an hour drive to Sonoma. They had some seasonal drinks and I had one that was like a “Fireside mocha,” which was quite tasty. Also the toasted marshmallow was a nice touch.

Our room at the boutique B&B in Sonoma (Inn at Sonoma) was ready early so by the time we arrived we could check in. I had stayed at one of their sister properties (funny enough the parent company is called Four Sisters) while working down in southern California. This place was just a few blocks from Sonoma Plaza.

We had a little bit of time to kill before dinner and decided to do a little bit of a hike at the Sonoma Overlook Trail (I had discovered it when I was researching a bit of the area to see where I could run – fit in a run later in the trip). The trail had a slight incline and took about 40 minutes of casual meandering to get up to the top. At the top we spotted a family of deer that were grazing and of course keeping an eye on us. Before heading out to dinner, we partook in the B&B’s free wine and cheese hour

Parker House Rolls (Chef John)

I also decided to make some Parker House rolls for Thanksgiving and tried a new recipe. This recipe makes 24 rolls. I did a half batch and they turned out good. I liked that the combining of ingredients was simple and there weren’t a lot of different steps where you added one thing at a time.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup warm milk
  • 1/2 cup warm water
  • 1 package active dry yeast (~7 grams, I did like 4 grams for my half batch)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 3 Tbsp white sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup butter, melted
  • 4 1/2 cup AP flour
  1. Combine warm milk, water, yeast (~110-120F) – let sit for 10 minutes
  2. Add eggs, sugar, salt, 1/2 cup melted butter
  3. Whisk together
  4. Add AP flour and knead until comes together (hand kneaded about 5-6 minutes)
  5. Form into ball and place in lightly buttered bowl until double (~2 hours)
  6. Press flat, divide into 24 portions and roll into ball (I weighed the whole thing and then portioned by weight).
  7. Roll out into a 4-5 inch long oval and brush with melted butter, then fold in half
  8. Place on lined baking sheet
  9. Cover with towel (I did saran wrap) and let rise until almost doubled (~1 hour, mine rose in about 40 min)
  10. Bake at 350 F (20-25 minutes) until golden brown
  11. Brush with melted butter while still warm.

I would make this recipe again. These rolls were delicious and were gobbled up quickly at the family Thanksgiving dinner. The dough was easy to work with and not super sticky/wet.

-StewsCat

Hawaiian Sweet Rolls

Hawaiian Sweet Rolls

For Thanksgiving this year I elected to make some rolls for the family potluck. I had previously made some good dinner rolls but didn’t remember the recipe (and only just now found that I have it saved as a draft here, so I will eventually publish that as well). I decided to try making a dupe for the famous Hawaiian Rolls. There are many recipes that can be found online.

This recipe is from Mike’s bakery NYC. The following recipe makes 15 rolls

Ingredients:

  • 530 grams All-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 14 grams instant yeast
  • 180 grams pineapple juice
  • 90 grams milk
  • 85 grams honey
  • 1 tsp white vinegar
  • 1 large egg (~50 grams)
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • Egg Wash: 1 egg beaten with 1 Tbsp water
  1. Combine flour (minus 30 grams), salt, yeast in mixing bowl
  2. In a saucepan (low-medium heat), heat pineapple juice, milk, butter, honey, stirring – heat until 120-130 F
  3. Add mixture to flour
  4. Add egg, vinegar, vanilla and remaining 1/4 cup (30g) flour and combine.
  5. Knead 8-10 minutes, cover, rest 15 minutes
  6. Weigh dough, divide into 15 equal pieces and shape into balls
  7. Place on lightly greased 9 x 13″ pan (leave room for it to expand)
  8. Cover and let double (~60-75 minutes)
  9. Preheat oven to 375 F with rack on lower-middle rack
  10. Brush top with egg wash and bake 18-20 minutes or until golden brown on top.

I would make this recipe again. The rolls turned out good. I will say the dough was quite wet and sticky and I did end up adding in additional flour but overall just had to keep working it until it formed into a less sticky dough ball.

-StewsCat

New York City (October 2025)

We made our (now 3rd) annual trip to the Big Apple recently. With the flight, I had access to some hotel deals and figured we’d go back old school and stay at The Palace. The Lotte New York Palace was the place we stayed the first time we went to NY together in 2016. At the time it was undergoing some construction. The location is also very convenient.

After landing a little bit earlier than scheduled, I definitely felt like there was more breathing room making our 10:30 pm dinner reservation (this was the ONLY reservation for this particular restaurant the entire 5 days that we were visiting). With traffic, we also decided to take the train (Skytrain and then subway) to get into the city which saved us at least 30 minutes compared to a taxi. After checking in and dropping our stuff, we caught another subway down to SoHo to Raoul’s.

Even though it was a late Wednesday evening, the place was packed and the atmosphere loud. After a short wait, we were seated at our cozy table (right in the middle of the restaurant with patrons squeezing past and a random little fish tank. For dinner, I started with the seared foie gras and D had a endive and blue cheese salad. Known for their steak au poivre, we both elected to get that, which came with house made fries and a salad. Of course we also had to get a cocktail. One of the things the establishment is known for is a very large painting of a nude woman lying in repose – D had the view during our dinner.

Day 2 started with me ordering some Liberty Bagel (lox bagel for me, cinnamon raisin for D) as well as some Black Fox coffee (both a convenient short walk from the hotel).