one hour dinner rolls

First place some milk, butter, and sugar in a microwavable container.  If you’re out of milk, water will work fine, too.  You want the temperature to be between 120-130; in my microwave that’s just about exactly 2 minutes.
 While that’s warming up, mix the dry ingredients.  One of the tricks of quick rolls is to use “rapid rise” or “quick rise” yeast.  “Bread machine yeast” is usually the same thing as well.  There’s no proofing involved here, (that’s when you mix the yeast with warm water until it’s foamy)  you can just put the yeast directly into the flour and stir it up.  I usually keep a jar of yeast on hand, so I’m calling for a tablespoon here, but know that if you don’t make bread very often and you have little packets of yeast and don’t want to open more than one, this will work just fine with a packet.
Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture.  If you’re using a stand mixer, just turn the beater on and slowly pour it in. I also like to add an egg, but you can leave out the egg if you want and replace it with 1/4 water.  I find the egg gives the rolls a bit more structure.  Without the egg, the rolls are just as delicious, it’s just a little bit different texture.  It is important to note, however, that you’ll want to let your egg sit in a bowl of warm water for about 5 minutes to bring it to room temperature.  Otherwise, when you put the chilled egg into your dough with that warm milk, it will bring the temperature down.
Then add a little more flour.  This dough will be very soft and sticky, so don’t start thinking it needs way more flour and go dumping it in.  Or if you do, don’t come back and leave me comments saying your rolls were dense and gross.  It should just barely come away from the bowl when you’re beating it, but still be sticky to the touch.  I add just a little less than 4 1/2 cups, usually more like 4 1/4, and then I put the last 1/4 cup on the surface where I’m rolling out my dough.

The trick here is to get that nice flour-covered surface, and then gently scrape the dough onto it using a spatula.  Once it’s all plopped on out, use the flour on your board to sprinkle all over the dough so it doesn’t stick to your hands.  Don’t knead the flour in, just use it to coat the outside of the dough.  Use light hands and form the dough into a smooth-ish shape.

I like to then score my dough with a pizza cutter, it helps to get even sized rolls.  For dinner rolls, I do 24.

Then just grab the portions and lightly form into balls.  And I use the term “ball” loosely here. As you can see, you don’t need to spend very much time perfecting little dough spheres.  Just lightly round them and plop them in there.

Okay go to http://www.ourbestbites.com/2013/11/one-hour-dinner-rolls/ for photos and the rest of instructions.