School House Rolls

When I was in elementary school the lunch ladies would make the most wonderful yeast rolls. Sometimes I would just have rolls for lunch with a glass of sweet tea. Over the years I have looked for a recipe to make them. When I visited my friend's Mama last month I was talking about these rolls and she had a clipping from their local paper that had a recipe for these rolls. They are pretty near to what I remember, except for the wheat flour. If I made them again I might try to use all white to see if that recreates from my memory the lunch ladies rolls from the past. These are a really dense, yeast-flavored roll. I'm usually challenged by yeast but this recipe doesn't involve a lot of steps and has such a quick rise time, they were really easy. I guess lunch ladies don't have a lot of time to wait around for rolls to rise when they are feeding lots of hungry kiddoes!

SCHOOL HOUSE ROLLS

2 cups lukewarm water
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons yeast (3 packets)
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup powdered milk
24 ounces (by weight) or 4 cups white flour
6 ounces (by weight) or 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
Plus some additional flour to achieve correct consistency.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine warm water and oil in bowl of a mixer. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, yeast, salt, powdered milk, white and whole wheat flour. Using a fairly heavy duty mixer slowly add flour to liquid beating with each addition. Add sufficient white flour so that the dough is not sticky. Knead dough into a ball and place in a large bowl. Cover with a cloth and let rise for 15 minutes in a warm place. Punch down , cover and allow to rise another 5 minutes. Shape into 2 ounce pieces of dough (about 1/3 cup) and place in a greased a 9 x 13 baking pan. (I got an additional pie plate of about 5 rolls too). Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes until nicely brown. Baste with butter when you take them from the oven.