Merry Christmas Ginny-

Not much time this busy morning for posting, and this is probably too late to be helpful.

Recipes for soft dinner rolls are as common as flip-flops in the summer, every common post-WWII cookbook like Betty Crocker, Good Housekeeping, Pillsbury, and the web sites for the yeast companies, will all have recipes for white dinner rolls made with active dry yeast. Prior to that, the homemaker used fresh yeast, and those are the soft white dinner rolls I remember my mother making. If I close my eyes I can still recall the wonderful smell you can only get by using fresh yeast, which is all but unavailable these days. Wal-Mart carried fresh yeast during November and December, and that was the last time I could find it in local stores. It's been at least 15-years since I last bought fresh yeast.

The one thing those recipes have in common, and the one tip I can give when making them, is to use all-purpose flour like Gold Medal or Pillsbury, which are National Brands. That was the type of flour used. It wasn't until the advent of the automatic bread machine in the late 1980's that "bread flour" was available for household use.

Nearly any recipe that has butter and milk in it will be the one to pick. Avoid using King Arthur All-Purpose or Robin Hood All-Purpose flour because they are higher in protein. If that is the type of flour you have to use, add a little more butter to the recipe (1/2 to 1 T.) to help cut the gluten-development.

Hard rolls require flour milled from high-protein hard wheat flour (like bread flour), while soft rolls are best made with flour that is a mix of soft wheat and hard wheat - like National Brands of all-purpose flour. I have a rather interesting bread machine recipe for Soft White Bread that uses 1 cup of white cake mix, which is milled from low-gluten soft wheat, and that is the "secret" ingredient for soft bread.

Before going gluten-free, when I wanted to make soft dinner rolls using whole wheat flour (I mill my own flour), I used a 3:2 mix of hard white wheat and soft white wheat (or used a low-gluten flour for the soft wheat like spelt or einkorn).

I've been gluten-free for 4-years as of Jan. 1. I now find the smell of bread repulsive. For me, flour was a poison to my body, and for many people it's an addiction. The two isles of the store I try to avoid are the detergent isle due to the onslaught of all the toxic fragrances, and the bread isle.

Best of luck on your gluten-free journey. My best advise is to stay clear of processed gluten-free foods due to the high-glycemic flours and starches they are made from. I use coconut flour and nut flour for baking, and have recently added banana flour to the mix, along with milling my own gluten-free flours from a variety of grains/seeds/beans, and I keep rice flour and starches, which are common to all-purpose g-f mixes, to a minimum. When I use rice flour, I soak, sprout, and dry brown rice myself, and mill it into flour to reduce the arsenic found in rice. Nearly all commercial g-f mixes and foods contain cheap, high-glycemic, rice flour. So you are trading one issue - gluten - for another potential issue - blood glucose (and diabetes). I've even been considering a 10-day grain detox to see if I should also eliminate corn from my diet. But I need to get through today, and get the visiting family on their way back to their homes (12-hours away) before the snow storm hits Saturday, before I can even contemplate a detox plan (lol)!

-Grainlady

I saw yeast cakes in our local grocery store (large regional, part of a multinational company) a few weeks back. I'm guessing they stock for holiday baking but maybe they have it all year round.

I'm hardly the baking expert but I thought I had heard that professionals and serious home bakers had largely given up on the fresh yeast because it can give inconsistent results. I have no idea if fresh yeast results in a "better" product.

I don't think that, at least for me, gluten is toxic. I love a good loaf of bread not to mention things like pasta made with traditional wheat flour. Maybe I should try giving up gluten or at least reducing it but I can't possibly see paying what they ask for a gluten free loaf at the store, much less making it myself.

Merry Christmas to you guys! Grainlady you are such an example of the good friends here at GardenWeb. Who else would write to me on this busy day except someone here!!

I found a recipe I'm ok with. I so appreciate all your advice about how to make good rolls, unfortunately like you, this will be the last season I make breads. I've got bread just coming out of the bread maker for breakfast, and then small dinner rolls to be made for dinner.

I'd love to talk more about your GF path but I have to be at my daughters with breakfast in hand in 1 1/2 hours!

Whatever you celebrate today, I hope it's a wonderful day for and your family.

My celebration is "Merry Christmas" Grainlady and Mike!!

Ginny

Ginjj,

Here's a link to an old thread of favorite hot roll recipes:

Favorite Hot Roll Recipes

I've made Lindac's recipe--the first recipe at the top of the thread for 'Mrs. Avery's Hot Rolls'--and liked it very much. Prolly won't do you much good for today but you might want to hang onto it for 'next time'.