Soft Homemade Bread Machine Dinner Rolls Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How to keep bread machine bread soft? ›

Pack the bread in a covered nylon bag and put it in the freezer of the refrigerator. Keeping this way can leave bread all month long. Want to save bread for a long time but still soft, should use oil paper or nylon bag, tightly packed inside to have a lump of sugar and then to cool.

Too much flour, or not the right kind, could be to blame. Dough made only from flour with a high or even average amount of protein (like bread flour or all-purpose flour) can become tough from overmixing. Protein gives bread structure in the form of gluten—the more you mix and move the dough, the more gluten you get.

Stay fresh: Both the fat from the milk and butter preserve the freshness of these soft dinner rolls and keeps them soft for a days. The fat keeps the rolls from drying out!

Cover the rolls with a slightly damp, clean kitchen towel. Wrap the entire plate in a dry tea towel. Microwave until just warmed through, 30 to 45 seconds. The rolls should not be piping hot, or they will turn tough and chewy as they cool.

Soft rolls and hard rolls are yeast breads, but quick breads are chemically raised doughs (with baking powder or baking soda). Soft rolls would be dinner rolls or sandwich buns which are usually enriched with dairy, butter or some other fat, and normally are sweetened to some degree.

Too much flour, or not the right kind, could be to blame. Dough made only from flour with a high or even average amount of protein (like bread flour or all-purpose flour) can become tough from overmixing. Protein gives bread structure in the form of gluten—the more you mix and move the dough, the more gluten you get.

The dough was under or over proofed. This is the most common reason for dense bread because it can be hard at first to determine when dough is ready to bake.

Starch helps the dough by trapping the gas from the yeast in the dough and makes the bubbles stronger. This helps the bread to rise and be lighter and fluffier.

For a soft roll, I bake the bread at 180°C in a 'non-fan' oven; it works far better than a fan oven for soft rolls. I then cook them for 20 minutes and, if when I tap the bottom of the loaf it sounds hollow, it's cooked.

If you want it to remain as fresh as possible, then you really have to enclose it in something like a plastic bag to retain its moisture. But the crust will be soft if you do that. For me, I just use bags to keep it fresher and then I will reheat a bun or loaf briefly to crisp the crust up again the next day.

Should you brush rolls with butter before baking? ›

Butter basting: Rolls can be brushed with butter before, during, or after baking. While it doesn't brown the surface as much as egg wash will, it does promote browning and adds a lot of flavor.

Bread storage takeaways

For best moisture retention, slice bread from the center out, rather than from one end. Store airtight with the two cut halves facing each other and pressed together. Wrapping bread to retain moisture keeps it soft, though it robs crusty artisan bread of its crispy crust.

Expired yeast or moisture contaminated yeast will have trouble growing properly and this can lead to dense bread machine bread.

Cause: typical of too much flour (or other dry ingredients) or not enough liquid; less often a result of too little yeast, too little sugar, too much salt, or old ingredients. Here's what you can try doing to improve your loaf: Reduce your flour* or increasing your liquids.

If the fermentation is too fast or too slow, too long or too short, or not as predicted, dense bread is often the result.