A watercolour of six pale soft rolls joined together in a round pan, tops burnished gold
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Soft enriched milk rolls

Milk rolls

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Plain flour.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
6
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.3 L
Active
20 min
Total
115 min

Ingredients

Softer and sweeter than the pan loaf, because milk does two things water does not: the sugars in it brown, and the fat shortens the crumb.

Warm the milk, do not boil it. Blood temperature. Boiled and cooled is fine too, but hot milk kills yeast exactly as hot water does.

  1. Flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a bowl, salt away from the yeast.
  2. Warm milk and oil in, mixed and kneaded five minutes. This dough is softer and stickier than a water dough and that is correct. Resist adding flour.
  3. Covered and left until doubled, about an hour.
  4. Knocked back, divided into six, rolled into balls, and set in the cold pan just touching each other. Twenty-five minutes to rise again.
  5. Lid on, lowest flame, 20 minutes. Then flipped as one round, lid on, 10 minutes more.

They will join together as they rise, which is the point: you tear them apart and the sides are soft where they touched.

Best within a few hours. By the following morning they are dry, which is what bread with no preservatives does, and they toast well in the same pan.

Do not taste the dough: raw flour.

Makes 6.

What this was adapted from

Soft enriched milk rolls: the bread roll made with milk rather than water for a softer crumb

  • fresh whole milk → UHT milk

    Long-life milk behaves identically in dough. Ultra heat treatment changes the flavour slightly in a glass and not at all once it has been baked into bread, which makes this one of the few places UHT is a straight swap rather than a compromise.

  • an oven → a heavy covered pan over a low flame

    The rolls join into one round and brown on the base rather than all over, so they come out soft-sided and pale on top, closer to a batch loaf than to a crusty roll.