For 30 years, my wife has made store bought Rhodes Rolls for our holiday feasts. These are little frozen balls of dough, maybe 1-inch in diameter, that come from most any supermarket. She puts three frozen balls of dough in each hole of a muffin tin, let’s ‘em warm and rise, then bakes ‘em.
They are tasty and they are a family tradition (maybe not in that order ;«) )…so, I figured why not try to make my own. From the ingredients list and the nutrition info on a 3-pound (1,362 grams) package of (36) rolls, I’ve come up with a reasonable starting point and am looking to y’all for comments and suggestions. First, the ingredients from the package:
Flour (with lots of additives)
Water
Yeast!
Sugar
Oil
Salt
Malt
Other additives, to enhance yeast growth, etc.
The first thing that jumps out as odd is that yeast is third on the list! From the nutrition info, I see that both fat and sugar are two grams per serving, which means 72 +/- grams per 36-roll package. Assuming that the yeast is also "just" 72 grams per package, I conclude that they must use fresh yeast. The conversion ratio for fresh to instant is 4:1, so I’ll start with 18 grams of instant.
Googling around, I learn that a good hydration rate for dinner rolls is 62%. A little arithmetic gives me the following formula:
Flour 698 grams 100%
Water 433 grams 62%
Sugar 72 grams 10%
Oil 72 grams 10%
Instant yeast 18 grams 2.6%
Salt 15 grams 2.1%
Total weight 1,308 grams
The total weight is less than 1,362 grams because I’ve cut back on the weight of yeast by switching from fresh to instant. I’ve omitted the malt.
My questions are:
They are tasty and they are a family tradition (maybe not in that order ;«) )…so, I figured why not try to make my own. From the ingredients list and the nutrition info on a 3-pound (1,362 grams) package of (36) rolls, I’ve come up with a reasonable starting point and am looking to y’all for comments and suggestions. First, the ingredients from the package:
Flour (with lots of additives)
Water
Yeast!
Sugar
Oil
Salt
Malt
Other additives, to enhance yeast growth, etc.
The first thing that jumps out as odd is that yeast is third on the list! From the nutrition info, I see that both fat and sugar are two grams per serving, which means 72 +/- grams per 36-roll package. Assuming that the yeast is also "just" 72 grams per package, I conclude that they must use fresh yeast. The conversion ratio for fresh to instant is 4:1, so I’ll start with 18 grams of instant.
Googling around, I learn that a good hydration rate for dinner rolls is 62%. A little arithmetic gives me the following formula:
Flour 698 grams 100%
Water 433 grams 62%
Sugar 72 grams 10%
Oil 72 grams 10%
Instant yeast 18 grams 2.6%
Salt 15 grams 2.1%
Total weight 1,308 grams
The total weight is less than 1,362 grams because I’ve cut back on the weight of yeast by switching from fresh to instant. I’ve omitted the malt.
My questions are:
- Does my assumption that Rhodes must use fresh yeast seem sound? And, obviously, my guess as to the amount of yeast Rhodes uses isn’t much more than a SWAG.
- Would you recommend using AP or bread flour?
- Any suggested tweaks to the sugar or oil amounts or to the ratio of sugar to oil? Since all weights on nutrition info list are rounded to the nearest whole percent, the sugar and oil could range from 54 grams to 90 grams.
- Any other thoughts or observations?
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