Bobby Flay Parker House Rolls are soft dinner rolls made with milk, butter and three eggs, ready in 2 hours 45 minutes. One batch makes about 24 rolls, and they get brushed with melted butter straight from the oven. Only twenty minutes of that is hands on.
Flay made these on Boy Meets Grill in an episode called All American, and the dough starts with milk brought to a simmer. The butter and half a cup of sugar melt into that hot milk rather than being creamed in. That is what makes the crumb soft enough to pull apart with your fingers.
The milk has to cool before the eggs and yeast go anywhere near it, and that one word is easy to skim. Hot liquid kills yeast outright and scrambles eggs on contact. Lukewarm, around body temperature, is what you are aiming for.
4
servings30
minutes40
minutes300
kcalHalf the flour goes in first and the rest follows half a cup at a time, so you can stop when it balls up. Two separate rises are built in, an hour for the first and up to forty minutes once the rolls are shaped.
Ingredients
- For the Dough:
1 1/2 cups milk
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus more for brushing
1/2 cup sugar
1 package active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
6 cups all-purpose flour
Directions
- Scald the milk and cool it: Place the milk in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat, stir in the butter and sugar, and let it cool. Separately, dissolve the yeast in the warm water and let it sit until foamy.
- Mix the dough: Combine the cooled milk mixture, eggs, yeast, salt and half the flour in a mixer fitted with the dough hook and mix until smooth. Add the remaining flour half a cup at a time and stir until a smooth ball forms.
- Knead and first rise: Remove the dough from the bowl and knead by hand on a floured surface for about 5 minutes. Place it in a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 60 to 70 minutes.
- Shape and second rise: On a floured surface, punch down the dough and shape it into your rolls. Place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet, cover again and let rise until doubled, about 30 to 40 minutes.
- Bake and butter: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown, then remove from the oven and brush with melted butter before serving.
The 2 hour 45 minute total is 20 minutes of work plus about 2 hours of rising and 20 to 25 minutes of baking. No nutrition is published, so the calorie figure is estimated per roll.
The recipe leaves out the one thing that makes these Parker House.
FAQs
What shape is a Parker House roll?
The recipe only says to shape the dough as you like, which skips the defining step. A Parker House roll is rolled flat into a round, brushed with butter, then folded almost in half so it bakes with a lip. Without that fold you have made very good dinner rolls under the wrong name.
Food Network files this under dessert. Is it sweet?
Half a cup of sugar across twenty-four rolls works out to about a teaspoon each, so they read faintly sweet. The Thanksgiving Desserts tag on the page looks like a filing error, since these are dinner rolls. Cut the sugar to a third of a cup if you want them plainer.
How much is one package of active dry yeast?
Two and a quarter teaspoons, or seven grams, which is a standard envelope. Active dry needs the warm water step to wake up, so wait for the foam before you commit. No foam after ten minutes means the yeast is dead and the batch will not rise.
My dough did not double.
Picture the room: under 68 degrees and an enriched dough like this crawls, because the butter and eggs weigh it down. Set the covered bowl in an oven with only the light on, which holds around 80 degrees. Give it longer rather than more yeast, since time is what builds the flavor.
Can I make them ahead for a holiday?
Shape the rolls, cover them and refrigerate overnight after the first rise, then finish rising at room temperature before baking. Baked rolls freeze well for a month and reheat in a 300 degree oven in ten minutes. They belong on the table beside something like these pomegranate glazed ribs.
Why brush butter on after baking rather than before?
Brushing hot rolls as they leave the oven soaks the butter into the crust instead of frying it. Butter applied before baking browns too fast and can leave the tops dark while the inside is raw. For a sweeter bake from the same oven, this apple praline loaf uses a glaze instead.
