Potato Rolls – Easy Homemade Recipe

This Easy Potato Roll Recipe makes a soft and slightly sweet bread roll that’s perfect for dinner or slider buns. Even the beginner baker is going to love making them.

This recipe was updated from 2017 to improve user experience.

Potato Roll recipes are a must for St. Patricks Day. The good thing about this recipe is that it’s so versatile that you’ll love making them all year long.

We know that baking bread can be intimidating for people that have never tried it before or tried it unsuccessfully and are scarred for life.

To some people, yeast is a scary ingredient. If you are one of those people, this Super Easy Potato Roll Recipe is for you!

What is a Potato Roll?

Potato rolls have cooked potatoes in the ingredients which make them moist and tender.

This recipe uses very simple ingredients and in uncomplicated steps. Let’s break it down.

Potato roll ingredients

• Mashed potatoes – peeled and boiled potato before any cream or butter is added. We used one medium-sized potato.
• Potato water – we retained one cup. You can also use plain water if you don’t have the potato water.
• Instant yeast – Yeast may also be labeled as rapid-rise.
• Flour – All-purpose flour
• Sugar – White granular sugar
• Shortening – makes these rolls soft and tender. We always use the Crisco brand.
• Salt – We use Kosher salt in this recipe.

How to make potato rolls

This recipe can be hand mixed and kneaded. However, we’ve found that it works better with an electric stand mixer.

The dough is soft and buttery but not overly sticky. When we put the dough hook on the mixer it comes away from the sides of the bowl and forms a ball.

When we mix by hand, sometimes we have to add extra flour to prevent it from sticking to our hands.

You use what you have. We’ve done it both ways and it works regardless.

1. Boil a medium-sized peeled and diced potato. Pour the potato water into a glass measuring cup. Mash the potato until fairly smooth.

2. Combine all of the ingredients into the bowl of an electric stand mixer fit with the paddle attachment. Mix until the ingredients are well combined.
3. Change the attachment on the mixer to the dough hook and allow the mixer to knead the bread for 7 minutes. The dough should come away from the sides of the bowl and form a ball.
4. Put the dough in a bowl that’s been oiled or sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Cover the bowl and let it rise for 90 minutes.

5. Shape the dough into rolls and place them on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Cover them with oiled plastic wrap and let them rest for 1 hour.
6. Remove the plastic wrap. If you want to top with seeds or grains such as caraway, sesame, poppyseeds, or oats, brush with melted butter and apply your garnish.
7. Bake. Brush with melted butter if desired.

Tips for the perfect Potato Dinner Roll

• If you’re making mashed potatoes for dinner, just make them earlier in the day. Scoop out a cup before adding the cream and butter for Potato Rolls!
  • You can either finish making your mashed potatoes and warm them up or finish making them right before dinner.
  • We often keep mashed potatoes warm in a slow cooker for holidays and that would work well here too.
• You can use instant mashed potatoes (not just the flakes). You’ll need 1 cup.
• It doesn’t matter if the mashed potatoes are cool or warm but they blend better if they’re at room temperature or slightly warm. You can mash the potatoes ahead of time and let them cool. Don’t forget to reserve the water.
• We like our rolls approximately the same size so they bake at the same rate.
  • Using a kitchen scale, weigh the entire piece of dough and then divide that number by the number of rolls that you want.
  • I’ve made this recipe into 24 rolls which are perfect for a dinner roll and 34 rolls for sliders.
• If you want your rolls to be individual round rolls place them a little further apart on the baking sheet so they don’t touch once they’ve risen. For a tear-apart dinner roll, you can place them closer together so they’re touching once they rise.

• If you want to garnish the rolls with seeds or grains, we brush the dough with melted butter and apply the garnish right away so it will stick. For ungarnished rolls, you don’t need to brush the dough with the butter.

• We do brush our ungarnished baked rolls with butter because it keeps the crust soft.

If baking scares or confuses you, check out or Baking Basics Techniques, Tools, and Ingredients article.

These are dinner roll-sized but I could easily have made them into 12 hamburger-sized potato buns. I’ve made this recipe into 24 dinner rolls and even 34 smaller rolls for sliders.

That’s exactly what we do when we make Brioche buns too.

Storing + Freezing

Storing

Baked potato rolls can be stored at room temperature for up to three days.

They can also be placed in an airtight container and frozen for up to 3 months.

Make Ahead

Potato Bread Rolls can be made ahead of time too. After you mix up the dough cover it with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Slip the bowl into the refrigerator.

To bake them the next day, remove the dough from the refrigerator and shape it into rolls. Allow the rolls to rise until doubled in size. Since the dough is cold, this may take up to 2 hours.

Freeze the dough

We let the dough rise and then shape them. Put the rolls on a parchment-lined baking sheet and slip them into the freezer.

Once they’re frozen, you can put them in an air-tight freezer bag or container and take out the amount you want to bake.

To bake, place the frozen bread on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet and cover them with plastic wrap sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Let them rise until doubled in size, 3 to 5 hours.

Other bread recipes perfect for St. Patty’s Day

• Soda Bread with Raisins
• Waterford Blaa Bread Rolls
• Molasses Brown Bread
• Dutch oven Soda Bread with Cherries

We LOVE baking bread! You can find all of our bread recipes here!

What you may need

• Baking sheets
• Measuring Cups & Spoons
• Pastry Brush

Pin it

My neighbor stopped by and she ate the buttered prop for my photos and said they were like crack, which is a good thing.

I sent her home with a bag for her family and told her to make sure her family got a few!

If you liked this bread recipe you may enjoy these too

• Italian Bread Recipe
• Medianoche Bread
• Cherry Bread
• Organic Whole Grain Bread

Print

5 from 8 votes

Potato Roll Recipe

This Easy Potato Roll Recipe makes a soft and slightly sweet bread roll that's perfect for dinner or slider buns. Even the beginner baker is going to love making them.

Prep Time 20 mins

Cook Time 25 mins

Rising time 2 hrs 30 mins

Total Time 3 hrs 15 mins

Servings 24

Author Hostess At Heart

Cook ModePrevent your screen from going dark

Ingredients

• 1 cup potatoes mashed (medium to large)
• 1½ cup potato water
• 1 package instant yeast (2-1/4 tsp)
• 4-1/4 cups all-purpose flour may need an additional 1/2 cup
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup Shortening Crisco
• 1 tsp kosher salt

Optional

• *2 tablespoons melted butter for brushing roll tops prior to baking optional
• Caraway or other seeds optional

Instructions

• Boil a peeled and diced potato in 2 cups of water. Once the potato is cooked, pour the cooking water into a glass measuring cup. Mash the cooked potato and measure out 1 cup.
• Combine all of the ingredients into the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix until the ingredients are well combined. If you don't have enough potato water add lukewarm water.
• Change the paddle attachment to the dough hook attachment and allow the mixer to knead the bread for 7 minutes on medium to medium-high. The dough should come away from the sides of the bowl and form a ball. The dough can also be hand-kneaded.
• Put the dough in a bowl that’s been oiled or sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Cover the bowl and let it rise for 90 minutes.
• Punch the dough down and shape the rolls. I used a scale to get uniformed size rolls. Put the rolls on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, 12 to a pan. Cover and allow the rolls to rise for an additional hour. Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Brush tops with melted butter and seeds. Bake approximately 20-25 minutes or until brown.
• Store at room temperature in an airtight bag or container for up to 3 days.

Notes

Rolls can be shaped into:

• 24 dinner-sized rolls
• 34 slidder buns
• 12 hamburger buns

Nutrition

Calories: 78kcal | Carbohydrates: 10g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 1g | Sodium: 97mg | Potassium: 6mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 6g | Calcium: 1mg | Iron: 1mg

This recipe was calculated using the exact brands and measurements I used to make this recipe. If you are following a strict diet please note changing anything will cause the nutritional info to change. My calculations are intended as a guide only.

Tried this recipe? That’s awesome!Mention @hostessatheart or tag #hostessatheart!

We teamed up with some of our favorite bread bakers to bring some more Irish bread recipes to you. I found several that are on my must-make list!

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