This has been our Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinner roll for many years now. Everyone loves it! It's like having croissants, only better! They are light and fluffy, and so easy to make! Can also be made ahead and frozen. Makes 3 dozen rolls.
1 cup water
1 cup REAL butter (2 cubes)
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
1 cup cold water
4 beaten eggs
2 pkgs. yeast, or 2 TBS
1/2 cup warm water
7 1/2 cups flour
Follow directions carefully and you will have no problems. Bring the 1 cup of water to a boil and add the butter, sugar and salt. (if you cut up the butter it will melt quickly into the boiling water) Remove from heat. Pour into a large plastic bowl that you have a good fitting lid for. (if you don't have one, invest in one, it's worth it and you can get them inexpensively at Walmart)
Add 1 cup cold water.
Dissolve the yeast in the 1/2 cup warm water in another bowl or measuring cup. (this should be like the temperature you'd want to take a bath in...you want the water to feel very warm, not just lukewarm. Your fingers should be comfortable under the water, but it should feel good and warm. 110° to 115° if you have a thermometer. I also read you can test it on your wrist or hold a spoonful up to your chin. Might be more accurate than finger testing.)
While the yeast is doing it's thing, which would be to get all bubbly, beat the eggs in a separate container. Add the yeast mixture and beaten eggs to the bowl and stir briefly to incorporate with the butter mixture.
Before you begin to add the flour, do yourself a big favor and measure it out into another bowl. It's easy to loose count with that much flour and is enough to recount if you haven't added it to your wet ingredients! Trust me!
Add the flour a few cups at a time and stir in. It's going to be sticky and gooey, but just get all the flour wet and don't worry about it. Put the lid on the container and pop it in the fridge to sit overnight!
The next day it will have risen all the way to the top. It also won't be as sticky. After punching dough down, use a sharp knife and cut the dough into thirds. Lightly flour a surface to roll out the dough on. You don't want to add any more flour than necessary to roll it out to keep the dough light. Roll into a ball, and then roll out into a circle. (I have a hand held dough roller that I bought from Pampered Chef. I imagine you can buy them at other places, but I love this dough roller. It works great for pizza crust, cinnamon rolls, anything, especially if you are working in a pan.)
Melt about half a cube of butter and using a pastry brush, brush a coating of butter all over the circle. Then, using a pizza cutter, cut the dough just like you would a pizza, into 12 pieces. Now, take one of the triangle shaped pieces and starting at the wide end roll it up. Then set it on your baking sheet, coated with Pam, and bend it into a crescent shape. At this point, if you want you can pop the pan in the freezer for several hours and then put the rolls into a ziploc bag, which can be taken out the day you want to bake them, and thaw them and let them raise several hours and then bake.
Repeat with the rest of the dough, making 3 batches of a dozen rolls.
If you are ready to bake them now, preheat the oven to 400° and let them rise about an hour or so. My original recipe said let them raise 4 hours, which I thought was crazy, and I thought they fell kind of flat after too long. About an hour works for me. Bake for about 12 minutes until golden brown. You can rub butter on the tops of them when they come out of the oven.
I know this is a lot of instructions, but these really are a very easy roll for the results you get.
Enjoy!
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