Whole Wheat Potato Rolls

1/17/2013

I normally reserve my bread making for spring and summer - taking full advantage of the Georgia humidity. I also had a bad winter bread making experience a few years ago which makes me even more hesitant to make bread in the winter. I was making a little more than a hundred yeast rolls for an order that I needed to fill in the middle of January a few years ago. I made my never-fail batch of roll dough and set it on the counter to rise. The dough rose slightly but not nearly to its normal pillowy fullness. I decided to go ahead and divide my dough into rolls and I set them on the counter to rise. An hour later - nothing - no rise. Two hours later - still no rise. At that point I started to get a little nervous so I brought 2 small humidifiers into the kitchen. I was trying to pump as much humidity into the air as I possibly could. Another hour later - my rolls were barely starting to rise so I started to boil pots of water on the stove in a last ditch effort to produce steam. Short of turning my kitchen into a tropical rain forest, I tried EVERYTHING to get some humidity into my kitchen so that these rolls would rise. Unfortunately, this story doesn't have a very happy ending. After 5 hours of waiting for the rolls to rise, I ended up with yeast rolls that were lifeless and flat. My rolls were a disaster and because of that, I'm somewhat hesitant to make bread during the very dry Georgia winters. I saw this recipe in Taste of Home though and I decided to break my no-winter bread rule and give them a shot. Luckily, this story has a much happier ending.

Whole Wheat Potato Rolls
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
2 cups warm water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1/3 cup mashed potato flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups flour
4 cups whole wheat flour
2 Tablespoons butter, melted

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Combine sugar, oil, eggs, potato flakes, salt and white flour in mixer. Beat in yeast until smooth.