These 6-Ingredient Rolls Were My Missouri Grandma’s Claim to Fame

When it came to Sunday dinners and holiday gatherings on her northern Missouri dairy farm, my Grandma Shirley was all about home cooked comforts that would feed a crowd. Her seven children all had families of their own and, at any given feast, roughly 12 to 20 of us would squeeze into the humble two-story farmhouse. We’d line up and shimmy through the well-loved kitchen, filling our plates buffet-style and then find any available seat in the kitchen, dining room, or living room.

The crowning item on everyone’s plate was one of Grandma Shirley’s Hot Rolls. We’d watch them rise and smell them baking (usually a task handed off to my aunt Billie Jo), and then joyfully give them a paint stroke of butter before using the delightful rounds as vehicles for homemade mashed potatoes and gravy nudging up against our fried chicken legs or pheasant strips and battered morel mushrooms plucked from the wooded acreage out back.

What You’ll Need for Grandma Shirley’s Hot Rolls

This simple handed-down recipe consists of pantry staples that we almost always have on hand. The salt, sugar, butter, quick-rising yeast, flour, and hot water require just a little mixing, kneading, punching down, and rising followed by exactly 25 minutes in the oven. They puff up, proud and golden, ready to be pulled apart in their piping hot glory and devoured on-site or used the next day for hot ham and cheese sliders.

Grandma Shirley’s Hot Roll Recipe

Servings: 2 dozen rolls
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 55 minutes