For a while I had been wondering when Alton Brown was going to do a show on dinner rolls. It finally came in one of the final episodes of the Good Eats series - "Roll Call". I decided to give his butter flake roll recipe first. These rolls are made by rolling out your dough into a square and buttering the square. Then you cut the square into 12 long stripes. You stack 6 strips on top of each other and then turn them on their side and slice them into 6 rolls. This creates layers of buttery goodness! Below you will find my experience from doing this recipe myself. For the full recipe, visit Food Network's website.
1. The weather was very humid both times I made these rolls, so I ended up having to add some additional flour.
2. I made a silly mistake each time I made the dough. The first time I put all the butter into the dough instead of saving some for later to spread onto the dough. The second time I added melting butter when making the dough instead of room temperature. Maybe one of these times I will get it right. But in the end both times the rolls tasted good and that is what matters.
2. My dough took longer to come together than 8 minutes, but eventually I got it to the point where I could take a piece out and pull on it until it was almost see through (the window test).
3. My dough also took longer to double in size. A lot longer. I went an extra half hour.
4. When rolling your dough try to get it as close to a square as possible, I never seem to be able to do as well as Alton does with this. You want your strips to be able to line up. Also because no to pull on the strips when stacking them, it's very to stretch them out.
5. Alton says to bake them for 8-10 minutes. I ended up closer to 10 minutes, almost 11.
Despite my error, these rolls still turned out delicious, I doubt we will have any left tomorrow. They probably would have risen more if I hadn't made that mistake. But I think with rolls even if you don't do them perfectly, they will always be delicious. I think there is a lot more room for error in roll making than bread making, especially with sandwich loaves. As a suggestion, try spreading some honey on your rolls. I used some orange blossom honey on one half of my rolls, which just made them even better! I will be doing these again for sure to work on my technique and because they are so good!
Recipe Grade: A
These look so good! Great pictures too!