I'm not certain, but formed yeast dough might over rise in 8 hours. Perhaps make the dough as normal up to and including shaping, then freeze. A genereal cookbook should cover how to handle frozen unbaked yeast dough.

You can do that for sure, I do it all the time. I'm not sure why, but sometimes the rolls rise overnight in the fridge & I just take them out long enough to knock the chill off before baking them. Other times they don't rise much at all so I set them out long enough to double in size. I think they taste just as good or even better. Every year I make cinnamon rolls, often on the 23rd because the 24th can be crazy, shape them, pan them up & bake on Christmas morning. I don't use a specific recipe for refrigerating overnight, just my regular recipe-3 cups flour, 1 cup water, yeast, salt & oil or butter.

Thank you both. I guess I'll try it in a test run. I can freeze the test rolls if it works, as extras for the meal. Lisa, I don't have enough freezer space to freeze the unbaked rolls (they'd get squished before they froze hard), but that's good to know. Nancy, I think I want a bit of egg in the dough, so I'll just find a recipe that looks good and easy and try it.

If it would make your morning go easier, I think if I were you I'd just bake them the night before too. You said no oven space for baking at the party, I don't think anyone will know if you have baked them 18 or 8 hours before dinner.

My sis will take the holiday 'roll assignment' most years. Before she retired, she would often make them 7-10 days before traveling for the holiday, freeze them baked. They would be thawed by the time she arrived - no one ever complained. ;0)

I make overnight cinnamon rolls and butterflake rolls regularly, they do need enough time on the counter to warm up from the refrigerator before baking. I think since they are going to be reheated, I'd also just bake them the day before. Just in case you don't want to do that, here's my favorite overnight butterflake roll recipe:

https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Herbed-Butterflake-Rolls

Have fun!

Annie

I agree, bake the rolls the day before.

I plan to bake my rolls the day before, tightly cover them and have them for our meal on Christmas Day. I do have a refrigerator dough recipe that I use from time to time. Making the rolls and letting them raise in the fridge, takes up too much room in my refrigerator as I have many things to store in there to fix for Christmas Day. I use the bread machine to mix up my dough, I like that better than using the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I think I will get out the second bread machine and have it ready as I want to make two batches and don't want to wait that long in between batches. Good luck with your rolls.

Sue

I've used a refrigerator roll recipe a number of times. Bumblebeez posted hers here a few years ago, and it's the one I use. It stays in the frig and you pull off chunks of dough, form them and let them rise and bake them.

Either way, I'd bake your rolls ahead of time Olychick.

I don't know why I thought I had to bake them day of, since they need to be reheated anyway. Thanks to you all for being the voices of reason!

ETA: And thanks for the recipe recommendations, too.

Another who says the day before. I made a batch of Parker House Rolls yesterday, wrapped them well in plastic wrap then foil and took to my son's for dinner tonight. They were fabulous.

Good to know. Thanks!

Linda92, I see others liked your post, so I'm thinking that your recipe is a popular one. Have you ever, or would you think it would work to cut back on the sugar a bit? I don't really like a sweet roll for a dinner roll (cinnamon rolls are great, tho).

I'm not Linda but I have made her Mrs. Avery's recipe many times. The rolls are very good & are my usual go-to for holiday meals. I do cut the sugar back to about 1/4 cup. The rolls are still somewhat sweet.

I routinely reduce sugar amounts in bread recipes. Bread doesn't need sugar---French bread is just flour, water, yeast & salt. But 'enriched' doughs with sugar, egg & fat are better 'keepers'--i.e., stay fresh longer than lean recipes like French bread.

At Thanksgiving, I decided to adapt Rusty's Oatmeal Bread recipe for dinner rolls.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2360229/rusty-oatmeal-bread-recipe

I always reduce the sugar in the Oatmeal Bread recipe (DSII's favorite homemade bread.) Since I was making dinner rolls, I decide to enrich the dough by adding 2 eggs & approx. 1/4 c. butter. The rolls turned out fabulous and are now DSI's favorite rolls. Baked day of but the rolls were still very good and not noticeably stale three days later when the last ones were eaten.

Oly, my recipe is slmost identical to Linda's but use a 1/4 cup of sugar.

And then there was the time my son asked me for the recipe. I scanned the recipe in my mother's hand writing and emailed it. He made them and told me they were a lot sweeter than he remembered, but very very good and so tender!
Then figured out that he had put in 1 1/2 cups of sugar.....that's when I typed it up!
So you see it doesn't matter a lot. I sometimes have used 4 egg yolks if I had use for the whites, and some milk and some water...or even cream if I was short of milk.
But with the half cup of sugar, it makes really really good cinnamon rolls!

Thanks, my inclination was to use 1/4 c sugar for Linda's dinner rolls, so it sounds like that will work. Funny, I've made bread many times, but I am a total recipe follower, so don't always trust my instincts about changing ingredients - I don't understand the science of it and worry about goofing up the proportions.

Thanks, too for the Oatmeal Bread recipe; I have a similar one I make using rolled rye flakes - a "secret" recipe one of my dear friends shared with me (she sometimes sells the bread and didn't want the recipe shared elsewhere). I make it for special occasions/people and it is always such a hit. I always have oats on hand, not the rye flakes, so I'll try it.

Help!

Linda or anyone else who has made her Mrs. Avery's rolls!

I am just ready for shaping to bake; do you not let them rise a second time after shaping? It doesn't mention it in the directions and I always have, but maybe these are different.

Thanks!!

well, I had to decide before I got an answer, so I searched CF to see if there was another version of the recipe here and I found this thread where someone had the same question and got the answer to yes let them rise another time before baking. So that's what I'm doing. Posting this in case anyone else runs into the same dilemma:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2489711/question-about-linda-cs-roll-recipe-please

Sorry, I didn't see this....but I see you found the answer.

Thanks for everyone's help with this. I've found some confidence now about making rolls, as they turned out great, everyone loved them and they were so EASY. I made a batch of Mrs. Avery's rolls as a trial and they were good and very easy. I may have mismeasured the salt, as I felt they needed more, but salted butter slathered on the finished product fixed that pretty well. I also may have added a bit too much flour; next time will use a lighter hand with it. I cut the sugar by half and the sweetness was perfect.

I also tried this recipe and ended up using this for two different Christmas dinners, mostly because the directions were explicit, including how many rolls the recipe made, which I needed. It's very similar to Linda's but with an extra egg. They were lighter, but I think could have been because of me adding a bit too much flour to Mrs. Avery's. I did cut down on the sugar here, too. Someday, maybe I'll think to take pictures of the final product.
World's Best Dinner Rolls

Yummy...one more egg and another tablespoon and a half more butter....and a full half cup of sugar...how could that hurt anything?

I think Mrs. Avery's recipe is a bit low on salt...I always add more, but this year I was having an awful sinus infection and went to nap while my son ( who is a weigh and measure all to the last grain person) made the rolls....I said I think they need more salt....he said,"Well I followed the recipe" I must amend the recipe! But a little extra butter solved the problems!

Linda, I cut the sugar in Mrs. Avery's recipe and the other recipe both by 1/2 and both were perfect sweetness for dinner rolls for me. I pulled some rolls from both recipes from the freezer for dinner tonight and I do think Mrs. Avery's is a heartier, yeastier roll (but still soft and fluffy, too) and I preferred it over the other recipe after freezing them. I will add more salt next time, though.

The reason they are softer and fluffier is because of the less butter and one less egg....but a rich dough is lovely too