Twinkle's Kitchen | Whole Wheat Rolls

One of the things I look forward to each holiday season is eating lots and lots of my grandmother’s homemade rolls. Soft, warm and buttery, from the oven straight to the table, her rolls are crucial to our family feasts.

As magical as those rolls are, they are fairly easy to make. And with a few recipes adjustments, they can be quite a bit healthier as well.

I’ve been on a mission to eliminate as much bleached flour from our diets, switching out when I can with whole wheat and grains in recipes. Substituting the all-purpose flour in this recipe completely unfortunately creates some pretty heavy rolls. Think paperweights.

Part of the reason Mamaw’s rolls are so amazing is their light, airy quality, and I want my rolls to have that same magical quality.

In order to maintain the lightness, I replaced some of the all-purpose with whole-wheat flour. To my delight, this was a perfect solution for incorporating some whole grains into one of my favorite lifelong recipes.

Whole Wheat Refrigerator Rolls

-Makes 24 rolls-

Ingredients

• 3 tbs. active dry yeast
• 2 cups warm water (110° to 115°)
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup canola oil
• 1 tbs. sea salt
• 4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 cup set aside
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour

In a large bowl or mixer bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Make sure your water is no less than 110 degrees or more than 115 degrees. Water that isn’t hot enough won’t allow the yeast to grow and water too hot will kill it, and your rolls won’t rise.

Let the yeast sit in the hot water for about five minutes to bloom. You’ll notice that it becomes frothy and bubbly.

Then add the sugar, egg, oil, salt and three cups of the all-purpose flour.

Beat on medium speed for approximately 5 minutes.

Stir in whole-wheat flour and sprinkle some of the remaining cup of all-purpose
flour into the mix until it becomes a soft dough.

Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and
elastic, about 10 minutes.

Place dough in a greased bowl making sure all of the dough is coated with oil.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.

About an hour and a half before serving, punch dough down and form into dinner-size rolls.

Place on greased or parchment-covered baking sheets for plain rolls.

Cover and let rise until doubled in size, about one hour

Bake rolls at 375° for approximately 10 minutes or until light golden brown.

Serve warm right out of the oven with softened unsalted creamery butter.

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Twinkle VanWinkle was born in a small town in Mississippi. A life-long lover of music, media and food, she grew up following those three things along her path. She has almost 20 years of professional cooking under her apron strings, feeding thousands of friends, family and other folks while working in restaurants and bakeries in Oxford, Miss. She baked 300 apple pies for the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and appeared on “The Best Of...” in the same year. Along with producing dynamic entertainment content for LIN Media, she is a mother, musician and social media fanatic.

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