Q: I am in charge of making the rolls for this Thanksgiving. Because not a whole lot compares to the rolls when they're straight out of the oven, I'd like to consider making them the night before and par-baking them.
Would you recommend that? If so, how would I store the par-baked bread until the next day? I'm hoping to find a good solution, because I want to give my family the kind of thing they're used to!
Sent by Sheryl
Editor: Sheryl, we have never par-baked rolls, so we need to throw that part of your question out to the readers. But we will say that we usually make the dough (and shape the rolls) ahead of time, then hold the rolls in the refrigerator all night. A somewhat sweet dough, like the potato dough rolls from yesterday's roundup of breads, will do this very well. They don't take very long to bake, so I would suggest just making up the dough and shaping them, then baking the next day.
But par-baking might be a better way to go; readers, do you have any advice in that area?
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My grocery store sells par-baked baguettes. You just throw them in a hot oven for 15 minutes, and they bake and crisp beautifully. I'm sure, however, that it took a good deal of trial-and-error for the bakery to get the timing down. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd want to experiement with for Thanksgiving. Perhaps you could refrigerate the dough this year, experiement a few times, and par-bake the next.
King Arthur Flour's blog recently had a great recipe post about dinner rolls and how to make in advance. There's info about making the dough and shaping as well as info about parbaking.
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2009/11/12/the-one-thing-i-have-to-bake-every-thanksgiving-pull-apart-butter-buns/
I have a recipe from an old Betty rocker cookbook that I use. It's just a basic roll recipe using half water and half scalded milk as the liquids. You form the dough into balls, bake in muffin tins for 20-30 minutes at 275. Cool and freeze. To serve, brown in 400 degree oven for 7-10 minutes.
Haven't seen it for rolls but I do remember instructions for bread where you cook 90% of the normal time then bake like ten minutes to finish it off when you get where you are going (this was on a bake time of around 30 minutes for a boule). However since this is T-day and not a big time for experimenting why not cook them fully freeze in foil and reheat in the foil in the oven, they'll still taste oven fresh.
try the sunset magazine recipe for "overnight soft herb rolls"
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1853911