Freezer-Friendly Fresh Yeast Rolls
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Yeast breads are intimidating to many people. Having tried a time or two and failed or perhaps just hearing too many horror stories about how difficult yeast is to master, I know a lot of folks who won’t even attempt to make homemade breads or rolls this way.
But y’all know if I’m going to bring you a recipe, its really going to be easy and doable by everyone. Today’s recipe is no different.
These rolls are absolutely delicious but my favorite part is the seeds. I LOVE wheaty bread with seeds inside, it’s my favorite. For this recipe, you can use what seeds you prefer or the combination I used. Everything is nicer when you customize it to your own tastes.
Once you are done with the dough, pull off bits the size of rolls and place them on greased cookie sheets. Cover well and freeze, then remove and toss in zipper seal bags and return immediately to the freezer. When you need rolls, take them out and place them on a greased cookie sheet or in greased muffin cups and allow to rise in a warm place (covered with a towel) until doubled in size. Bake as usual and you have warm, seedy and delicious dinner rolls with no fuss!
This recipe makes about 75 rolls. With the convenience of only baking what you need, they can last for quite some time! 
You’ll need: oil, bread flour, whole wheat flour, quick cooking oats, salt, yeast, brown sugar, a bit of white sugar, flax seed, and sunflower seed (or your seed preference).
Most of you are going to use yeast bought in packets. If that is the case, you’ll need three packs of yeast. I prefer to buy mine in a jar because I go through a good bit of it and its just nicer to be able to measure it out and pop the jar back in my fridge. Yeast in a jar will last for ages if kept in the fridge, well past the expiration date.
If you do buy yeast in a jar, it tells on the side how many teaspoons are equivalent to a package :).
In a mixing bowl place bread flour, tablespoon of white sugar, and yeast. Add warm water.
Here is where a lot of people run into problems. If you’ve had difficulty with yeast breads in the past it was most likely due to one of two things:
- Water Temperature
- Inactive (Bad) Yeast
The water temperature is tricky because it must be warm to help activate the yeast but if it is too hot, you’ll kill your yeast. This problem is simply solved if you’ve ever given a baby a bath. The perfect temperature for your yeast is the temperature of baby bath water. If it would burn a baby, it’s too hot. If it would chill a baby, its too cold.
If you are more comfortable being really technical about things until you get your yeast baking confidence about you, the water temp needs to be around 110F, you can use a candy thermometer for this.
Stir all of that up just a bit. It will be lumpy and thats alright. See those bubbles? That means our yeast is already active and growing!
This step is called “proofing” and that basically means that before we attempt to make bread out of this, we want to make sure our yeast is still viable.
So what we’re going to do is let this sit for about five minutes to make sure, although I can already tell we have some good yeast here.
Lets see what it looks like after five minutes…
Wow, see that? Happy yeast!
If, after five minutes, your batter isn’t bubbly and expanded like this, don’t go any further. You need fresh yeast.
Just go grab a few more packets at the grocery store.
Now lets add our bread ingredients and get us some dough a goin’!
Add in oats…
Whole wheat flour and more white sugar (mine is hiding under the wheat flour)
Brown Sugar
(I am using light, you can use light or dark)
A wee bit more white sugar, salt, and more warm water (baby bath water!).
Then we add about 1/2 cup of each kind of seed we want to use. These are sunflower.
I actually had salted sunflower kernels in my pantry and although you should use unsalted for baking, I used these and they worked out just fine.
You know we don’t get too particular around these parts.
Flax seed : yum yum! Good source of iron, too.
Mix all of that up. I am using my stand mixer and the dough hook but if you have to, you can do this by hand.
Just get ready to use some muscle in our next step! 
Now we start gradually adding our bread flour. Start by adding about two cups and blending that in. Then add another two cups and repeat.
You’re going to end up adding a grand total of about ten cups of bread flour but you may need a little less depending on the stickiness of your dough. I only used about nine cups of flour. You want to keep blending (or stirring – WOW you must be strong!) in between additions so you can see when your dough starts to pull away from the sides and stick together in one massive glob. Glob is good. Thats when we know we’re done.
See how globby mine is? I just have to blend it a bit more until all of that flour is incorporated and then I’m good to go. Now comes the messy part!
Get the biggest bowl you can find. It is most likely not going to be big enough but get it anyway. Pour a little oil into it, about 1/4 of an inch. Just plain vegetable oil is fine.
If you wanna get fancy you can use that ten dollar bottle of olive oil you got going rancid in the back of your pantry because it seemed like a good thing to do to buy it at the time…
Me, I’m just sticking with my $1.98 a bottle cooking oil. I’ll eat all that fancy olive oil food though, long as you cook it for me. ~batts her lashes~
Convince your dough glob to hop into the greased bowl.
If you can’t convince it to hop you’ll have to tug, pull, drag, and otherwise coerse it in there.
This is sticky, thats okay. Its a great excuse to lick your fingers when you are done. I love this bread unbaked almost as much as I do baked!
Once you have your dough in the greased bowl, flip it over a time or two so its all nice and coated with oil.
Cover it with a dish towel and let it sit in a nice warm place for about an hour, or until doubled …
I feel it only fair that I should warn you though, this dough is an over achiever 🙂
This is my dough after only thirty minutes.
Whoa thar, Nelly!
Better get us some rolls made!
Take a baking sheet or large baking pan or just whatever you have handy and line it with parchment paper or waxed paper.
Spray that really well with cooking spray.
Pull off globs of dough, about an inch and a half in diameter, and place them on your lined sheet.
When you fill up a sheet, wrap it really well in cling wrap or foil that has been sprayed with cooking spray and place immediately in the freezer for several hours.
Once frozen, peel off baking sheets and place in zipper seal bag and return to the freezer.
While you are doing this your dough is going ot deflate a little, don’t worry, its fine!
When ready to bake, take frozen balls of dough and place each one in a well greased muffin cup. Use that old grungy looking muffin pan you have coz it bakes good rolls.
Set in warm place and cover with a dish towel. Allow to thaw and rise until doubled, this will take up to four hours so you want to get them out at lunchtime in order to have rolls for supper. Once risen, remove towel and bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, or until browned.
I have absolutely no self control around these things.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 3 packages dry yeast
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 2 cups quick cooking oats
- ½ cup flax seed
- ½ cup sunflower kernels
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 4 1/2 cups warm water
- 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 2/3 cup vegetable oil
- 8-10 ¼ cups bread flour 1/4 for proofing and the rest for dough. Will most likely just need eight
Instructions
- In a mixing bowl place ½ cup warm water, tablespoon of sugar, ¼ cup of bread flour, and yeast. Stir together gently. Allow to proof for five minutes. In five minutes, it should be bubbly and noticeably larger in size.
- Add all other ingredients except bread flour. Beat for about a minute with electric mixer, until well combined. Slowly add bread flour two cups at a time, mixing well with a dough hook after each addition (can use regular paddle if you don’t have a dough hook). Add enough flour so that the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides. This will usually be anywhere from 8-10 cups. Dough will be sticky.
- Place dough in LARGE oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover with dish towel and let sit in a warm spot for 45 minutes to an hour, until doubled in size. Pull off 1 ½ inch balls of dough and place on baking sheets lined with waxed paper or parchment paper which has been sprayed with cooking spray.
- Cover and seal well and freeze until firm. Remove from sheets and place in zipper seal bags, returning to freezer immediately.
- To bake, remove desired amount of dough balls from freezer. Place each dough ball in a greased muffin cup. Cover with dish towel and allow to rise in warm place until doubled in size. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, or until browned and done.
- To bake rolls from unfrozen dough (the day you make the dough), place dough balls in greased muffin cups. Cover and allow to rise for about an hour or until doubled. Bake as instructed above.
Nutrition
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I’ve adopted a blogger!If you haven’t visited Maralee before, today is a great day to do so! She is the sweetest thing since peaches and cream and her etiquette advice is such a breath of fresh air in today’s world.Here is a post of hers that I just love “How To Be A Cool Breeze In Other’s Days”. This post truly touched my heart and I know it will touch yours as well.If can, take the time to read it, blot your eyes, post a comment for Maralee (she loves them as much as I do!) and go make the world a better place! I promise this post will help you do that!
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My kids are not happy with Southern Plate today! I’ve been working on this post since I first got up (just getting it up onthe website – I baked the rolls yesterday) and they have been waiting all this time for us to go to the park.
So I’m gonna hit “send” and head out and spend some time with them. I hope your summer is off to a great start and thank you for sharing a little of it with me!
Gratefully,
Christy
These look so yummy! And I love the freezer idea – too clever!!
There’s nothing like a warm yeast roll topped with honey butter!
I can’t wait to try these rolls. I’ve made yeast rolls and bread before, and you are right, it’s much easier than it looks. BUT, I lose all control around homemade breads. BUT, if they are in the freezer, they won’t be an tempting? Right? Right!
Christy-Love, Love, Love your site and recipies. I joined a few months ago and have tried and liked many of your recipies.
I was so eager to try the yeast rolls. I probably don’t have a use for 75 rolls but I will see about that. Funny story- I had to search high and low for the ingredients. Seems it’s tough too get all of them in the same place around here. For some reason, my scattered brain latched on to pumpkin seeds for one of the ingredients and had a long search for unsalted ones. Found them bulk in the store I used to work in after about 5 other store tries. So far the cost is about $8-9. No problem. After re-reading the recipie and finding out it was sunflower seeds I could kick myself-I had them here all along! LOL
The only problem I had reading the recipie is an ingredient is left out in the directions. In #1 there is no mention of yeast. I used the tutorial as directions after that. I’m going to make the rolls today and I’ll tell how well it goes soon.
Thanks for all your hard work and wonderful stories.
These look really good. Since I mix by hand and have a little-bitty family of 3, I’ll probably try it at half-recipe. Though I grew up with a Home Ec Teacher Mama and did 4-H, I never made yeast breads on my own until last year. I was good at following directions. Now I want to try these, and maybe I’ll be sending this recipe on to Mama. Thank you!
Oh. My. Goodness.
I made a half-batch of these today, and they are SO GOOD. Light and… perfect! I’ve always feared the yeast, but you made it easy! I brushed mine with garlic butter and sprinkled a little sea salt on top after they came out of the oven – divine!! Thanks for the great recipe and excellent instructions – this one is going into regular rotation in my kitchen for sure!!
You make this look so easy. Great Photos!