Parker House Rolls via Pioneer Woman

Our family holidays tend to revolve around food, which is super original of us, obviously.  This Christmas, we went to the country and had what I suppose you would call lunch, which for me consisted of eating my weight in crab balls and sampling everything else, including deer bologna (which according to my cousin, you aren't a real man unless you have some deer bologna in the fridge).  Then we came home for some crab chowder and these parker house rolls I found on PW's website.  The rolls were amazing, which tends to be the case when there is a stick of butter in the rolls themselves, and then you dip them in melted butter before baking and then for good measure slather a bit more on before eating.  They were so good I made them a week later for our traditional New Year's day turkey dinner (which strongly resembles a Thanksgiving turkey dinner only a smidge smaller).  Here is a link to the recipe on PW's site "Parker House Rolls"

You start out by scalding the milk and melting the butter and dissolving the sugar all together in a large pot, I use a dutch oven.  Then you let it hang out and cool down a bit, while you do something productive, like watch an episode of 30 Rock.

Once the milk has cooled some, stir in the yeast and most of the flour, then cover and let it rise for an hour (which is where the dutch oven complete with lid comes in handy, no fiddling around with saran wrap which never does what I want it to).  Next stir in the rest of the dry ingredients, after which you knead for a couple minutes, and then let it rest/rise for another half an hour.  At this point you could pop it in the fridge instead of letting it rise and then either bake the rolls several hours later (as in make the dough in the morning and then bake them in the evening) or the next day.

After the dough has risen, either on the counter or in the fridge, roll it out to about half an inch thick.  I find it is easier to roll when it is chilled, and the more I work with it, the harder it gets to cut out neat little rounds, in fact at the very end I smooshed the rest of the dough into a blob, tried to flatten it out and then dunked it in the butter, sort of folded it and ended up with a misshapen monster roll that became known as Austin's roll, which if I am not mistaken, he quite enjoyed.  Anyways, back to the point, roll out the dough, cut out circles, dunk them in melted butter and then fold in half and pop them on a cookie sheet.

Let the butter soaked rolls rise once more and then bake until golden.  Just see if you can resist eating one right out of the oven.

Parker House Rolls from The Pioneer Woman

2 cups milk

1 stick butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon (heaping) baking powder

1/2 teaspoon (scant) baking soda

1 tablespoon (heaping) salt

1/2 cup additional flour

2/3 stick additional butter

Combine milk, a stick of butter and sugar in a dutch oven, bring to a simmer, but don't boil it, then turn it off and let it cool to lukewarm, about 30 min.

Stir in the yeast and four cups of flour.  Cover and let rise an hour.  Then stir in the additional flour, salt, baking soda and powder.  Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for about 10 min.  Cover with a tea towel and let rise for 30 more minutes, or pop in the fridge and let rise overnight or for several hours at least.

Preheat oven to 400, and melt the rest of the butter.  Roll dough out to about 1/2 inch thick and cut out rounds.  Dunk each round in melted butter, fold and place on a cookie sheet to rise for another 30 min.  Bake for 15 min.