Make Homemade Yeast Rolls for your Thanksgiving Meal

Clarksville, TN – With Thanksgiving just around the corner, you can make your cooking day easier with this yeast roll recipe and tip. If you are like me, you cook quite a bit during the holidays. One of the things that takes a lot of time and effort is yeast rolls.

I am going to show you a way to make old-fashioned yeast rolls, freeze the dough, and have them all ready to defrost and rise on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

It is very handy to have these rolls in the freezer. You can pull them out whenever you want to make a meal special.

Step by Step Instructions

1. First, you make up your yeast roll dough using the recipe you like. I will include mine here in a bit.
2. Allow the dough to rise one time in the pan.
3. Make the rolls. Make small rolls, about1 1/2 inches in diameter.
4. Place the rolls on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Freeze til hard.
5. Take all the frozen rolls off the cookie sheet and put them in a ziptop bag. That way you can take out how ever many you need. Put them back in the freezer til time to use them.

To use:

Place frozen rolls on a baking stone or in a greased baking sheet about 1/2 inch a part.

Cover the rolls with a clean cloth and set the pan where it is out of the way of drafts.
 
Allow the rolls to **rise for 6-8 hours. Just before they are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400* F.
 
Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown.
 
Too short of a rising time will cause the rolls to be dense, so allow plenty of time to rise.
 
**If you want them to rise faster, heat the oven to 200*F. Once heated, turn the oven off. Place the rolls on the baking sheet in the oven and place a pan of boiling water on a lower rack in the oven.
 
Allow the rolls to rise. It will take about 2 hours with this method.

Aunt Eura’s Yeast Rolls

• 2 pkgs yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 c warm water
• 1/2 cup melted lard or butter or shortening
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 6 c plain flour

Melt the yeast in 1/2 cup warm water and 1 teaspoon sugar.

Mix all ingredients; add yeast and sifted flour until dough handles well. Knead dough until elastic ( Aunt Eura beat the dough 100 times with a rolling pin)

Put into a well greased bowl and allow to rise til doubled.

Punch down and make into rolls.

(at this point you will freeze the rolls)

If you choose to go ahead and bake them, allow the rolls to rise again til double. Bake at 400* F til golden brown.

Makes 3 dozen rolls.

Doubles easily.