Help please ... I have to make dinner rolls for a meal tomorrow

[Botany]

My favorite recipe will win a copy of "Epic Tomatoes" .... I'll
pay for it.

BTW I am planning to make them out of a yeast dough.

[SheilaT]

2. Alas, I didn't see this post until today,

but for the next time you want to make dinner rolls here's the recipe I use from the Better Homes and Gardens Homemade Bread Cookbook, copyright 1973:

4 1/2 to 5 cups all purpose flour
2 pkgs active dry yeast
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2 teaspoons salt
3 eggs

Soften yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. In saucepan combine sugar, shortening, milk, and salt. Heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Place in large bowl, cool to lukewarm. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of the flour, beat well. Add yeast & eggs, beat thoroughly until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to make a moderately stiff dough. Turn out on a lightly floured surface, knead 5-8 minutes. Shape into a ball. Place in lightly greased bowl, turning once to coat. Cover, let rise in warm place until doubled, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
Punch down dough, turn out on lightly floured surface, cover and let rest 10 minutes. Shape dough into rolls. (The cookbook has a series of roll shaping ideas with photographs, including making fantans and two different ways to make cloverleaf rolls, butterhorns, bowknots, stick twists, and swirls.)
Make the shape or shapes you want, let rise again until doubled, usually about 45 minutes. Brush with melted butter if you wish. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Makes 2 to 3 dozen rolls.

It's been quite a while since I've made these, and I think I may have often used some whole wheat flour to make them a bit more interesting. The biggest drawback is that the recipe makes so many, and given the 3 eggs, it's not practical to halve it. I used to make these for Thanksgiving, back when I was cooking for more of a crowd.

They really are good.

Oh, and all of my best recipes come from older cookbooks.

[FarPoint]

3. These are the best!

Is this a Parker House Roll recipe?

[SheilaT]

4. Sort of. The recipe is just titled Basic Rolls,

which I copied out and pasted above, and then shows ten different ways to shape the rolls, including one it calls Parker House Rolls. The instructions for that one (accompanied by a picture) are as follows:
Divide dough for Basic Rolls in half. Roll out each half 1/4 inc thick. Cut with floured 2 1/2 inc round cutter. Brush with melted butter. Make an off-center crease in each round. Fold in half so top overlaps slightly (large half folds over small half). Plus 2 to 3 inches apart on greased baking sheet. Makes 36.

While I've never done so, I suspect that shaping the rolls and then freezing them would be very effective. You could just then pull out what you wanted to bake, let thaw in the frig, and bake them up as needed.

This is a recipe from a cookbook copyrighted 1973, and all of my best recipes come from older cookbooks. For one thing, the older books don't find it necessary to have everything in whole, half, or one quarter measures. My best brownie recipe calls for 2/3 cup shortening, for instance. And note the three eggs in the above recipe.

Regarding eggs: In a recipe that date backs to at least the 1950's, which I suspect the roll recipe does, it seems best to use medium eggs. You can probably get away with large, but I'd be cautious about extra-large or jumbo eggs. Some years ago I was making my usual chocolate chip cookie recipe (from a cookbook from the 1930's, so old that it told you to chop up a semi-sweet bar as apparently packaged chips didn't exist yet) and I just happened to have medium eggs instead of my usual extra larges. To my surprise, they came out better than ever, so I simply switched to medium eggs all the time. Once I moved to Santa Fe, altitude 7,000 feet, I switched back to large or extra large, because slightly more liquid is needed in recipes, and just using larger eggs works. The cookbook version of my brownie recipe, again an older one, calls for four eggs. I use three extra large.

I really love to bake, and I've mastered high altitude baking quite nicely. Although since I haven't made the rolls since before I moved here, I'll want to fiddle a bit with the recipe, although sticking with three extra large eggs, reducing the flour by a tablespoon per cup (my standard flour reduction for my high altitude baking), and cutting the leavening in half (a must at altitude), they'd probably come out just fine.