Potato Rolls

About This Recipe

It may just be me, but I don’t think you can do anything wrong with a potato. To whoever first decided to add a potato to bread, thank you. Potatoes contain extra starch, which aids in fermentation, and they retain moisture incredibly well. If you know the benefits of tangzhong, a tool I often use in my dinner rolls, you can only begin to imagine the benefits of potato. Not only does a potato make the rolls softer and increase their shelf life, it adds an incredible lightness and airiness to the rolls. Here’s to a basic dinner roll recipe… with a potato.

What Are Potato Rolls?

Potato rolls are just a modified version of a dinner roll. You won't notice much of a difference in taste; however, the starch from the potato helps the dough trap and retain air, leading to a roll that is extra light and fluffy.

Considerations For Enriched Doughs

Enriched doughs, like potato rolls, contain ingredients that can make it difficult for gluten to come together. Fats (usually butter) and sugars in medium to large amounts mean it is necessary to develop the dough to a windowpane up front, in order to have the best fermentation experience. Without gluten, the dough simply cannot hold in air the same way. A dough that is not developed properly may taste flaky, like a biscuit, instead of tender or airy (as is the goal).

On a scale of 1-10, one being unenriched (like country bread) and 10 being heavily enriched (like panettone), this bread is about a "4" - it contains a medium amount of sugar and a little bit of butter, but not enough butter to interfere with the gluten network too much. With any enriched dough, though, I always resort to my stand mixer for the best experience. You'll find this dough needs 15-20 minutes of kneading to achieve a windowpane. I always find this process simpler and more efficient using my stand mixer.

Some home mixers are not built for kneading bread efficiently. Check the manual for your mixer, and be sure it is safe to endure mixing times of up to thirty minutes, just to be on the safe side. The most complicated bread in the bread-making world is panettone, which requires mixing times of up to sixty minutes. It is so very important not to overwork the dough or the motor on your mixer. I love my Ankarsrum stand mixer, which is more than capable of living up to the task of kneading even the toughest of doughs. If you do not own a mixer, it is possible to knead by hand, as long as you are willing to endure the task of kneading to a windowpane up front. You can use any preferred method, or find ideas in my video on methods of gluten development, here.

The "Why" Behind The Starter Build

Why Build A Starter (Levain) For This Recipe?

A “sour” flavor is not generally preferred for rolls. By building a levain, we can use a formula that helps to reduce overall sourness in the starter and in the bread. To do this, it is important to understand the starter, which consists of yeast and bacteria, and how the formula works to reduce sourness.

Sourness comes when bacteria are overpopulating in your sourdough starter, meaning they are out of balance with the yeast. This happens naturally, as bacteria reproduce faster than yeast do, especially in ideal climates. To limit sourness, it is important to favor the yeast in starter care. In this levain formula, I do just this in order to limit acidity and reduce overall sour flavor.

Stiff Starter

By giving the yeast more food (this means they can continue to eat, multiply, and produce CO2) and reducing the amount of water (bacteria favor wet climates), we can effectively reduce the amount of acidity in our starter at the same percentage of rise as a starter made with equal amounts of flour and water.

Sugar

This is one of the most important components of this levain – do not skip it! Sugar is a powerful tool. Added in low amounts, it feeds the yeast and speeds up fermentation. Added in high amounts, it dehydrates yeast cells and potentially stops fermentation altogether. Added in just the right amount, the yeast still thrive, but the bacteria suffer. 10-15% sugar in a recipe or levain creates something called “osmotic stress.” This stress to the bacteria limits their ability to reproduce, which limits acid buildup, thereby limiting overall sourness coming from the starter.

Temperature

In order to favor the yeast, I aim to keep this levain between 70-75 F (21-24 C) and use it when it has approximately doubled in size. Yeast produce most abundantly in these temperatures, while the bacteria in your starter (there are two types – lactic and acetic) favor temperatures both higher and lower than this. This specific temperature helps provide balance to the starter, which translates to how efficiently the starter ferments the bread and how mild the overall sour flavor is.

Optional Kneading

Have you ever heard of developing gluten in your starter? While it is not essential, kneading this starter for just a few minutes will help trap air, introducing oxygen and stimulating yeast growth. It also provides structure (by creating a slightly more elastic gluten network), which helps the levain rise and maintain peak more efficiently. 

The "Why" Behind The Dough and Process

Potato

Adding a cooked, mashed potato to bread dough is like adding an exemplified version of tangzhong. The potato's moisture helps delay staling and prolongs shelf life, while its starches capture air, and its natural sugars promote browning. These combined effects create rolls that are darker in color, exceptionally light and airy, and slower to dry out.

During my testing, I discovered that different potatoes affect fermentation differently, due to differences in starch and sugar content. This recipe uses a russet potato, which I’ve found to be my preferred choice due to its neutral flavor and its positive impact on fermentation speed.

Potato Water

If starches from potatoes help trap air during fermentation, why not also reserve some of its water for even more air retention? That's exactly what I chose to do in this recipe. The starch in the water helps the dough hold together better and stay fluffy. It also makes the rolls softer, more moist, and helps them bake to a beautiful golden brown—just like the potatoes themselves. By using potato water, we can amplify all the benefits of the potatoes and make the most of our effort.

Enrichments

I mix in a few enrichments with the potato water as it is cooling. These enrichments include:

Sugar

This recipe contains a medium amount of sugar, roughly 24%. This amount of sugar works to sweeten; however, it also has other effects - creating osmotic stress, which helps to reduce sourness, and pulling necessary moisture from the dough (which I have also accounted for in this recipe).

By adding the sugar to the potato water, we can ensure it is fully dissolved before moving forward with the recipe.

Butter

Butter is a tenderizer; it makes the dough fragile and soft. The amount of butter here is about 11% of the total weight of the flour, small enough to not interfere with the gluten network (too much), but large enough to help keep the bread soft during baking.

Cold Milk

Originally, I hoped to use only potato water in this recipe to lend the lightest, airiest result. Unfortunately, the excess of starches from using so much potato water created a dough that was difficult to handle. Milk helps to balance this out.

Milk is a tightening agent in bread, meaning it makes the gluten network stiffer and stronger, often increasing the time the dough ferments. This is because it takes twice the air to blow up a stiff balloon (our gluten network). However, it also adds a really good flavor and texture to dinner rolls like these potato rolls. It makes the bread denser, softer, and creamier. It also helps the bread darken in the oven.

Cold milk works perfectly here because it helps to cool down the potato water so that it is ready to be added to the dough.

Bread Flour

Bread flour increases the strength (elasticity) of the gluten network, which is helpful for enriched doughs containing butter and sugar (ingredients that can interfere with gluten). Bread flour also helps the dough come together more efficiently when kneading, reducing the total amount of necessary mixing time. While I used to make this recipe with a blend of all-purpose flour and bread flour, I now use bread flour only, just for the incredible way it holds the dough together. I use King Arthur Bread Flour, protein content about 12.7%, in any recipe that calls for bread flour (unless otherwise noted).

Salt

Salt helps bring out flavor (without salt, bread would taste almost like nothing), but also has notable effects on the dough. Salt is a tightening agent, meaning it, in addition to milk, helps create a more elastic (strong) dough. It does slow fermentation, as well as gluten development, but these are things we must account for in the recipe because we cannot have a recipe without salt. It is important to use just the right amount, enough to bring out the flavor, but not so much that the loaf cannot ferment or come together. I use the standard - 2% salt - in all my recipes, unless otherwise noted.

Mixing

Butter, sugar, potatoes - there are several additions to this recipe that can interfere with gluten's natural ability to come together over time. Therefore, it is preferable to knead this dough to complete development up front. That's why I choose to use a stand mixer - because the process for this can be kind of enduring by hand (though it is possible). Using a stand mixer ensures a perfectly and effectively built dough with minimum effort on the baker’s part. Watch this video for all the ways to develop gluten in your bread.

I want to be more specific in this updated post about how to develop the dough properly in the stand mixer than I was when I originally published this recipe. This way, you can be successful mixing this dough using any stand mixer, or even by hand.

The ultimate goal: to knead this dough to a windowpane. When you pull up on a section of dough, it should not tear. You should be able to stretch the dough to a point where you can see through it before it breaks. The dough will show other signs of being ready, too, such as clinging to itself or forming a ball around the dough hook. If you have a KitchenAid or similar mixer, the stand mixer may start to "jump" when the dough builds sufficient strength.

The first step to achieving this is to mix the dough on a low to medium-low speed until the ingredients are fully combined and the mixture forms one cohesive mass of dough. This step simply brings our dough together and hydrates the proteins in the flour before the speed is increased and the focus shifts from combining ingredients to forming gluten. Too fast a speed during this initial mix can start to organize gluten that is barely created, negatively impacting the development of the dough.

Next, we increase the speed and knead the dough until it forms a windowpane. The speed you choose is up to you and what your mixer (and dough) can handle. The basic guidelines are this:

• A lower speed will take longer, while a higher speed will knead the dough much faster.
• A lower speed will keep the dough elastic (strong, not stretchy), while a higher speed will create extensibility (stretchiness).
• The dough temperature should not exceed 78 F (26 C).
• Use the guidelines from your mixer to determine what it is able to handle.

Bulk Fermentation

Letting the dough rise as much as possible, but not too much, contributes to the airiest of loaves. In an attempt to favor the yeast and reduce sourness, I recommend keeping the dough temperature between 70-75 F (21-24 C). Watch the dough and ferment until it doubles in size (at least; about eight to ten hours). If you developed the dough well in the stand mixer, you can let it triple in size before shaping. Though I favor an overnight method for this dough, use your knowledge of your environment to bulk ferment this dough appropriately.

Refrigeration

While you do not have to place this dough in the fridge, I find this optional step helps to make the dough even more manageable during shaping, as well as helps increase flexibility in the baking timeline.

Shaping

Rolls are one of the easiest to shape - just divide them and shape them into rounds by tucking all the ends underneath, then cupping your hand over the top and moving it in a circular motion really fast to smooth out the top.

The key to working with this dough is swift and smooth motions. It's a delicate dough that can occasionally be sticky, so a small amount of flour or water can help as needed. Minimize handling as much as possible, and once you've placed the dough in the pan, try to avoid repositioning it.

The Wash

Because of the combination of potato, milk, and sugar (which all help with browning of the rolls), these rolls do not need a wash that will help them darken. Instead, brush the tops with butter to help keep them soft as they bake. You can add even more butter after they are done, if you choose.

Baking

400 F (205 C) helps to give these rolls a nice oven spring, as well as bakes them to a beautiful golden brown color. For this recipe, steam is not necessary, as the dough contains enough moisture and the butter (inside and on top of the dough) works to keep everything soft.

Suggested Timelines

Overnight Timeline

Refrigeration Timeline

Daytime Timeline

📌 Quick Tip: Read the recipe in its entirety before you start cooking. This will help you understand the ingredients, steps, and timing involved, and allow you to prepare any necessary equipment or ingredients beforehand.