You can never go wrong when serving some homemade yeasty rolls. I have made Parker House rolls before, but for Easter I decided to give Alton Brown’s recipe a try. The technique for Parker House rolls was invented at a hotel in Boston, MA. It’s basically a roll that is folded over with a pat of butter in the middle of the fold. Below you will find my notes from preparing this recipe. For the full recipe, visit Food Network’s website.
1. Since I have made this dough before, when making Alton’s Butterflake Rolls, I didn’t have any trouble putting the dough together. I did have to mix longer than Alton did to have a dough with good gluten formation.
2. Since I buy bread flour in bulk from Sam’s Club, I used bread flour instead of all-purpose. The extra protein in the bread flour can help in gluten formation, but isn’t necessarily with these rolls. 
3. My rising time of an hour was the same as Alton’s. You are just looking for the dough to double in size.
4. Forming the rolls in their Parker House form isn’t too difficult to do. After the forming, the rolls need to double in size. I was out of plastic wrap to cover the dough, so I had to use some wax paper instead. Since there is butter on top of the rolls, the wax paper didn’t stick to the top of the rolls. It’s important that whatever you place to cover the rolls doesn’t stick or your rolls won’t rise properly when baked.
The rolls came out wonderfully. I enjoyed them with several different varietal honeys spread on top.
Recipe Grade: A
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