Soft Butter CloverLeaf Rolls

These Soft Butter Cloverleaf Rolls are easy to make and go well with dinner or special occasions.

I love yeast rolls and so do my sons.  I was looking forward to making these Soft Butter Rolls for the Mellow Bakers’ group this month because I haven’t made yeast rolls for a while.

I served these soft butter rolls this past weekend when my youngest son came home from college. We had Italian Pot Roast with vegetables in the crock pot, homemade applesauce, and these delicious rolls.  These soft butter rolls represent comfort food at its finest!

I only have one muffin tin with 12 cups so I baked 12 cloverleaf rolls, formed the rest of the dough into round rolls, and baked them on a baking sheet.

Soft Butter Cloverleaf Rolls

Makes: 24 Rolls

These delicious rolls are based on the recipe from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb, 1.6 oz (4 cups) bread flour
• 8.1 oz, (1 cup) water
• 1.8 oz, 1 egg
• 1.4 oz (3 tablespoons) butter, soft
• 1.1 oz (2 tablespoons) sugar
• .9 oz (3 tablespoons) dry milk (powdered milk)
• .4 oz (2 teaspoons) salt
• .09 oz, (1 teaspoon) instant dry yeast

Hamelman’s recipe reminds me of my favorite yeast roll recipe.  You can find my recipe here.

The recipes are very similar but they do have a few differences. Here is a comparison of both recipes:

Butter: Hamelman 3T; my recipe 2 T
Bread flour: Hamelman 4 cups; mine 3 1/4
Sugar: Hamelman 2T; my recipe 1/4 cup
Dry Milk Powder: Hamelman 3T; mine does not include any dry milk
Salt: Hamelman 2 tsp; my recipe 1 tsp
Yeast: Hamelman 1 tsp; mine calls for 3 tsp of bread machine or active dry yeast.
Egg: 1 for both recipes

The dough for Hamelman’s recipe is made using a mixer; my recipe uses a bread machine to do the mixing and kneading and then you shape the rolls by hand.  His recipe makes 24 rolls (although I only made 21) and my recipe makes 16 rolls although I’ve never gotten but about 14 at the most from my recipe.  We like big rolls.

I’ve only made the regular roll shape with my recipe, but with Hamelman’s recipe, you can make cloverleaf rolls, square rolls, braids, hamburger buns, or cinnamon-raisin bread.  I was tempted to make the cinnamon-raisin bread but I decided to make cloverleaf rolls instead.

Directions for making the Soft Butter Rolls

Mix all of the ingredients, either by hand or using a mixer, until the gluten network is moderately developed.

Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Let the dough ferment for 1 hour.  I let mine ferment a little bit longer while I was doing other things.

Divide the dough into 1.33-ounce portions – about 24.

Divide each piece into thirds.  Lightly round the pieces and place them in groups of 3 into greased muffin cups. Cover the rolls and proof until light to the touch.

Brush with melted butter and bake at 400 degrees F for about 15 minutes.  My oven is hot so I turned it down to 375 so the rolls wouldn’t burn.

Brush the rolls once again as they come out of the oven.

These delicious soft butter rolls have been YeastSpotted. Please visit Wild Yeast to view all of the lovely breads in the roundup.

 

Thanks for joining me in the bread-baking blog.

Happy Baking!
Cathy

 

The Mellow Bakers group was hosted by Paul at Yumarama. We baked bread from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.