Butter-Dipped Dinner Rolls

Wednesday, August 23, 2006
If you are invited to your in-laws' house, or your future in-laws' house, or just the house of someone you wanted to impress, and you're supposed to provide bread or rolls, this is what you should take. These rolls will impress and delight everyone, and people will tell you that they are just like the rolls their grandmother used to make, which probably means they're even better than grandmother's rolls because in the mind of the person who is making that proclamation, grandma's dinner rolls have become an idealized, perfected version. One caveat, though: if your mother-in-law (or father-in-law) or a future in-law should happen to pride her- or himself on their own dinner rolls, you should not bring these because you will only upstage the aforementioned in-law, who will never love you the way you deserve to be loved.
I had some friends over for dinner tonight, and I made these rolls for them. Because it was the middle of the week, and because I figured if I was serving homemade rolls I could take the easy route on the rest of the dinner, I also served a deli roast chicken and a salad made from lots of different colors and sizes of heirloom tomatoes, capers, goat cheese, fresh basil, olive oil and sherry vinegar. For dessert, I bought a blackberry lemon tart. It was a fabulous middle-of-the-week dinner, and the guests were suitably impressed by the rolls. (And they did, indeed, compare them to grandma's famous dinner rolls).
The recipe is very simple and basic. The only confusing part was that it was unclear whether the recipe made 12 rolls or 24. At the top of the recipe, it said "makes 12." In the directions, however, it said to cut the dough in half, and cut each half into 12 rolls. That would be 24, if my lightning-quick math skills are correct. I compromised by making 15, and putting them in a 9 x 13 pan, instead of an 8 x 8 pan. That seemed to work just fine. Probably you could also make either 12 or 24, depending on whether you wanted larger or smaller rolls.
I plan to make these my standard Big Meal (e.g., Thanksgiving) dinner roll, and I hope that if I ever have grandchildren, they will remember them fondly.