Recipe: No-Knead Sweet Potato Dinner Rolls (2024)

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Emma Christensen

Emma Christensen

Emma is a former editor for The Kitchn and a graduate of the Cambridge School for Culinary Arts. She is the author of True Brews and Brew Better Beer. Check out her website for more cooking stories

updated Jan 21, 2020

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Recipe: No-Knead Sweet Potato Dinner Rolls (1)

Makes2 dozen rolls

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Recipe: No-Knead Sweet Potato Dinner Rolls (2)

In our opinion, a holiday table isn’t complete without a big basket of fluffy dinner rolls. How else are you going to sop up the last bits of gravy? These soft and airy sweet potato rolls are perfect for the job. They’re also very nearly foolproof, making them one less thing to worry about when planning the meal.

These rolls get a very mild sweetness from the mashed sweet potatoes. We think they go perfectly with all the sweet and savory foods on a holiday buffet table, plus they’re pretty great slathered with jam for breakfast the next morning! You can also substitute regular potatoes, yams, or pumpkin for the sweet potatoes.

When it comes to large dinner parties and holiday buffets, we appreciate no-knead recipes more than ever. The dough can be made the day ahead, refrigerated, and made into rolls the next morning. You can also make them ahead of time and freeze the baked rolls. Warmed in the oven, no one will be able to tell they weren’t baked fresh!

Tester’s Notes

When I first started baking bread just a couple years ago, the first thing I started out with was a no-knead bread. While I eventually moved on to more technical recipes, I always love coming back to ones like these no-knead rolls. They’re easy, forgiving, and as Emma mentions, nearly foolproof — a huge bonus when making these for a big dinner party, like Thanksgiving.

The sweet potatoes do add a subtle sweetness and a hint of extra flavor, which pairs so well with everything on your Thanksgiving plate, from the turkey and gravy to the cranberry sauce and green bean casserole. But really, my favorite time to eat these rolls has been at breakfast. I love splitting them in half and then coating the inside with a generous layer of butter and a dollop of honey or sometimes berry jam.

Kelli, November 2015

Comments

Makes 2 dozen rolls

Nutritional Info

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup

    (6 ounces) warm water

  • 1 scant tablespoon

    (1 package) active dry yeast

  • 1 cup

    (9 ounces) mashed sweet potatoes (see Recipe Notes below)

  • 1 cup

    (8.5 ounces) milk, whole or 2% preferably

  • 1/4 cup

    (2 ounces) unsalted butter, melted

  • 2 tablespoons

    light brown sugar

  • 2 teaspoons

    kosher salt

  • 4 cups

    (20 ounces) all-purpose flour

Instructions

  1. Combine the water and yeast in a large mixing bowl and let stand until the yeast is dissolved. Add the mashed sweet potatoes, the milk, the melted butter, the brown sugar, and the salt. Stir until all ingredients are evenly combined. Add the flour, stirring until a shaggy dough is formed and no more dry flour is visible. This dough will be very sticky.

  2. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let stand until doubled in bulk, at least 2 hours or as long as 5 hours. The dough can be used immediately, but it's easier to work with if you can refrigerate it for at least 2 hours. The dough can also be refrigerated for up to 24 hours.

  3. When ready to shape the rolls, sprinkle your work surface with a little flour and turn the dough out on top. Sprinkle a little more flour on top and press the dough into a thick disk. Use a bench scraper or knife to divide the dough into 24 pieces. Shape into balls and place about 5 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and allow to rise until the rolls are roughly doubled in size, about 45 minutes in a warm kitchen.

  4. About 20 minutes before the rolls are finished rising, preheat the oven to 400°F.

  5. Remove the cover and bake the rolls for 20 to 25 minutes, until they are puffed and toasted-brown. Serve warm or room temperature. Rolls are best the first day, but will stay fresh for several days after if stored in an airtight container.

Recipe Notes

To make the mashed sweet potatoes, roast a medium-sized (roughly 9-ounce) sweet potato in a 400°F oven until completely soft. Strip off the skin and mash.

For extra richness, brush the tops with melted butter or egg yolk before baking. So good! These rolls can also be frozen if you're making them ahead of time. Allow the baked rolls to cool completely, wrap them in aluminum foil, and freeze them. To reheat, let them thaw on the counter and then warm them in a 300°F oven for 15 minutes.

This recipe has been updated — originally published November 2010.

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Recipe: No-Knead Sweet Potato Dinner Rolls (2024)

FAQs

Is sweet potato a good substitute for bread? ›

Cooked sweet potato slices make an excellent and tasty substitute for bread buns, especially with burgers. They may also be used in a variety of recipes for grain-free breads and flatbreads. Other vegetables, like eggplants, bell peppers, cucumbers and mushrooms, also make great bread substitutes.

Why are potato rolls so soft? ›

It's all about the starch

So when you add potato to your bread dough you're upping the dough's starch content, effectively increasing the resulting loaf's total liquid retention — which translates to bread with soft, moist texture and a long shelf life.

Why are my homemade dinner rolls dry? ›

Too much flour makes dough too stiff to rise properly, creating a dry texture. A range of flour is always given in yeast bread recipes because flours vary in moisture content, reacting in different ways depending on the time of year, weather conditions, etc. Be careful measuring flour.

How can I make my bread fluffier instead of dense? ›

Potato Flakes or Potato Water

Starch helps the dough by trapping the gas from the yeast in the dough and makes the bubbles stronger. This helps the bread to rise and be lighter and fluffier. If you are boiling potatoes, you can use the unsalted water in place of the water in your bread recipe to help out the yeast.

What ingredient makes bread light and fluffy? ›

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Do sweet potatoes raise blood sugar? ›

Sweet potatoes are a source of carbohydrates, which raise blood sugars,” says White. “People with diabetes can eat carbs but need to watch portions of foods with carbs.” What this means: Limit portions to half a sweet potato per meal or snack.

Is sweet potato a good carb or bad carb? ›

Sweet potatoes contain the “good” kind of carbs – often called “complex carbohydrates.” Complex carbohydrates are considered healthier than simple carbohydrates. They take longer to digest and create more lasting energy.

Can diabetics eat sweet potatoes? ›

You can still eat sweet potatoes if you have diabetes, assures Huff. The fiber content in sweet potatoes, especially if you consume them with the skin on, can help reduce spikes in your blood sugar. Plus, how you cook your sweet potatoes can also help reduce the extent to which your blood sugar rises.

How do you keep dinner rolls from getting hard? ›

Stay fresh: Both the fat from the milk and butter preserve the freshness of these soft dinner rolls and keeps them soft for a days. The fat keeps the rolls from drying out!

What is a martin's potato roll? ›

“Martin's rolls are marshmallow-soft and sweet and magically made [with] potatoes. There's nothing better for sandwiching a charred burger patty with a slice of tomato, lettuce and onion. (Sorry, fancy brioche and squat English muffins)…”

Why did my rolls come out chewy? ›

The flour you used may have contained too much protein. Protein is one of the ingredients that help yeast bread brown. Use bread flour that is purchased at a grocery store or a national brand of all-purpose flour.

Why do my dinner rolls taste yeasty? ›

If your bread has a sour, yeasty flavour and smells of alcohol then you have either used too much yeast.or you may have use stale yeast or creamed fresh yeast with sugar.

Why do my dinner rolls taste bland? ›

Salt adds flavor to bread. If none or too little is used in a recipe, the bread will lack the right flavor and taste "bland." If you reduce the amount of salt, try adding some dried herbs to increase the flavor. Too much yeast in bread will give bread an off-taste.

Why didn't my dinner rolls Brown? ›

It sounds obvious, but bread generally needs to be baked at a high temperature. A golden-brown, glossy crust is achieved when sugars and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in the dough react together at high temperatures in the oven. For a simple dough of flour, water, salt and yeast, bake at 220 – 225C.

Why is my bread heavy not fluffy? ›

The usual reason why bread becomes too dense is due to using flour with low protein content. When your loaf is spongy and heavy, you might have also put too much flour into it or made the dough in a cooler or too warm setting. Bread baking may seem simple.

What happens if you add too much flour to dinner rolls? ›

It's a common mistake, especially for newer bakers. When there's too much flour and not enough liquid, the whole rising process is thrown off. The dryness of the dough will prevent the yeast or another rising agent from activating properly, leading to a stunted rise (or it may not rise at all).

Why are my rolls not doubling in size? ›

“The first thing that springs to mind,” Bertinet says, “is that your dough is probably too cold.” Or, put another way, the water you're using isn't warm enough. “It's vital you give the yeast a helping hand, otherwise it'll just slumber lazily,” he says, adding that your water/ flour/salt/yeast ratio is also crucial.

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