The Thanksgiving prep has begun with dogeared recipes, phone calls to family members, and pie dough made and frozen. But recently the question of bread came up: do we need it? Do we want it? Will anyone miss the bread if it's not a part of the meal?
People do Thanksgiving in many different ways - some are traditional with turkey and mashed potatoes, some staunchly untraditional with tamales or even take-out Chinese. My family falls very much in the traditional camp. While we may try a new vegetable or dessert recipe, there is always turkey, mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls.
But I've noticed in the past few years that the rolls just sit there, even if they're homemade and would otherwise be a big hit. I tend to think for such a robust holiday meal, the bread just gets lost.
What about you? Do you do dinner rolls for Thanksgiving and do you find family and friends enjoy them, are they more a tradition than anything?
Related: Biscuits and Rolls for Thanksgiving Dinner
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My family's Thanksgiving tends to be on the small side, 5-8 people, so we skip the bread. If we ever get larger than that, we would add some bread or rolls back in, I think.
I don't know much about the Thanksgiving traditions but here in NZ Christmas has lost its Big Hot Meal tradition in favour of BBQ's and salad type meals which is basically lots and lots of nibble platters, cold meats and salads which people graze upon all day.
But I suspect in a colder climate bread rolls would sort of be like housework, do it and it gets taken for granted but don't do it and EVERYBODY notices.
If breadrolls have been part of the Thanksgiving table I would still do them, make them smaller and not put them all out at once but plan of freezing the surplus after the meal. Plus instead of white flour use a mixture of wholegrains and toppings like sesame seeds or rolled oats etc.
Rolls are always present and always devoured. My family's a big fan of mashed potatoes+ dinner rolls.
In our house growing up we didn't normally have bread on the table for dinner. So for holiday dinners, rolls were a symbol of the special effort that went into a holiday meal.
I guess if a family has bread on the table every night, it wouldn't be as special, but it would probably be missed if there were no bread or rolls.
We usually have them. My carbs during the meal itself come in the form of stuffing and the mashed potatoes. That said, I rely on the presence of rolls for the just-as-traditional turkey sandwich the next day.
I was debating the whole bread/no bread thing when I came across this spiced ginger and pear recipe: http://www.dailygarnish.com/2012/10/ginger-spiced-pear-bread.html So I'm going to make that instead of traditional bread or rolls. And if it doesn't get eaten on Thanksgiving, it'll be great for breakfast the next day!
You can pry my crescent rolls from my cold, dead hands.
Who would miss the bread?? Me! I would!!! I'd miss it, for sure. Also, tamales might not be traditional in some households, but they are in mine. We don't make tamales at Thanksgiving to thumb our noses at the standard menu, but because it's one of the few times of the year that all my aunts, uncles and cousins are physically in the same place, and can all cram into the kitchen to take orders from my grandma and learn her tamale making secrets :)
A friend who is coming for dinner bakes the most delicious bread and always asks if she can bring it. Who would say no to that offer? Not me.
My family abandoned the bread or rolls at (Canadian) Thanksgiving years ago, along with the mashed potatoes, because all of us were ignoring them in favour of trying to maximize the amount of stuffing we could eat.
Rolls are a must. We don't eat bread or rolls with any other meals of the year except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. When my kids were young, it was pretty much all they ate. Now they and we look forward to them every year. Love rolls!
I make rustic dinner rolls from the Cook's Illustrated recipe. I wouldn't dream of leaving them out, and my sons would have a fit if I did!
Bread is essential. If you wouldn't miss it, it's time for a new recipe.
I don't like the dressing/stuffing my family makes, so rolls are one of my contributions. Plus I just love carbs in general. Bread is always welcomed.
(And a roll doused in mashed potatoes and gravy is delicious.)
It's become unofficial Thanksgiving tradition to go through the whole meal before my mom realizes that the rolls are still in their bag from the bakery on top of the fridge. She gets distraught and apologizes profusely, never realizing that no one else noticed they were absent either.
Now the next day -- Black Friday to some, Turkey Sammich Day to others -- the rolls fulfill their holiday destiny.
Crescent rolls are a must at our house, primarily because you can cut and toast them the next day to make an amazing turkey-stuffing-cranberry sandwich!
Somewhere in the past 10 years I stumbled upon an amazing roll recipe (Bon Appetit's Poppy Seed Dinner Rolls) and made them for a family holiday meal. They were an instant hit and I'm now 'required' to make them every Thanksgiving and Christmas. They're delicious, but a bit of work and I wouldn't keep making them if they were ignored! :)
We're a crescent roll family too. They are essential for buttering and sopping up whatever is left on your plates!
For the big extended family dinner of roasted bird and all the trimmings? Sometimes we have rolls, sometimes we don't. One side of the family traditionally serves a sausage-and-fruit stuffing that --- while very nice --- doesn't really hit my onion-and-herb stuffing sweet spot, so I sometimes bring tiny loaves or rolls of this herb and onion bread, which fills that nostalgic flavor niche quite nicely without anyone feeling like I dissed their stuffing.
For the two-person vegetarian Thanksgivings The Fella and I sometimes get to enjoy? If we're making the semi-traditional roasted squash galette with its yeast-dough base, bread is redundant. But this year we're having stuffed squash. With that little bit of stuffing, I think we might also enjoy rolls --- if only to sop up mushroom gravy!
I'm Italian so its always on the table when we are celebrating with my side of the family. My husband's family, on the other hand despite everyone in the group being excellent cooks in all respects, doesn't even like turkey (yeah, I know...) and they are not a 'bread' type family so its never served at Thanksgiving. We'll be at my mother-in-laws this year and I can guarantee that there will be no bread or rolls on the table.
I don't know if the rolls are necessarily essential to the Thanksgiving feast but they are a must have for sandwiches afterward (hopefully with my mom's homemade hot German mustard). I think much of my family sees the meal as something to get through to get to the leftover sandwiches!
Frozen foil pans of soft white Sister Schubert Rolls are a must all over the South. You've got to get them early because supermarkets run out. I've never seen anything like their popularity at holiday time. No crusty bread to go with all that brown mushy food down here.
My DIL always makes her justly famous Angel Bicuits. The grandchildren sit around the kitchen table before we bake them and dip their hands into cups of melted butter, dunking the biscuits and placing them on cookie sheets then Into the oven and out again - delicious!
What a funny question [says discerning back here in the deep south]. Forget the dinner rolls BRING ON THE CORNBREAD! I'm talking fried here & the crispier the better. But yes, I do offer rolls when inviting last minute guests I stumble across by divine providence (which is usually - I can only recall one Thanksgiving in the past 30 yrs that was 'just' family). Even so, the platter of cornbread is empty at the end of the meal, the rolls untouched.
No bread or rolls here. Between bread stuffing and mashed potatoes rolls would be extraneous.
We have a small thanksgiving which is mostly female and doesn't have a whole lot of big eaters. I would love to make rolls but I know they would just sit there - even if they were really tasty. My aunt always make a couple of loaves of bread that we use later on in the week for sandwiches though.
Bread is a must! For us it's store bought Hawaiian Sweet Rolls. They're so good, it wouldn't be the same without them.
I love that your family makes tamales! I also love hearing about the things beyond the norm of what people consider traditional for the turkey day meal. :)
Stuffing/dressing would seem to take the place of bread/rolls on any day, except Thanksgiving! The older I get the less bread I eat/need.
Maybe our Thanksgiving days were more savage (or less savage- depending on your opinion of clinking silverware) but I cant see it happening without bread/rolls to sop up all the good stuff.
Granted- it may only be a couple drops of gravy; a few crumbs of turkey or dressing; some of the mushroom goop from that green bean thing. Purple stuff from cranberries. Orange goo (with butter!) from the sweet potatoes. Do you folks just WASH that stuff off the plate?
How do you pick this up? Do you LICK your plates?
Of Course you need bread or rolls at Thanksgiving Dinner. How else do you get the dishes clean?
Lol @ E.Oliver. Yes and amen!