This recipe for soft, chewy hoagie rolls originally comes from The Kitchen Whisperer. If you follow me, you know I have my favorite sandwich roll recipe, but since I was going to make grinders, I decided to try this new recipe. I love making bread and I’m always up for trying new recipes.
This is a pretty standard bread recipe in terms of ingredients and technique, other than one thing. This recipe suggested adding cold cubed butter during kneading as opposed to adding melted or softened butter as you usually would. I have only added cold butter to dough when making laminated doughs or brioche, so this intrigued me. I decided to give it a try.
I was expecting the cold butter to take a long time to incorporate into my dough in the stand mixer, but it actually came together reasonably quickly. Using cold butter does slow down the rising of the dough, so you need to make sure you have extra rising time, especially if it is cold in your kitchen like it is in mine right now.
If you need a tutorial on shaping rolls like these, see my sandwich roll post I linked to above for photos on how to shape them. These rolls baked up well and had a nice chewy, fluffy texture that I really enjoyed for grinders. I loved them and would make these again.
Soft and Chewy Hoagie Rolls
Ingredients
- 4 cups bread flour give or take 1/4 cup
- 1 1/2 cups water give or take a little
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2 1/4 tsp instant yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp cold unsalted butter cubed
Instructions
- Combine 3 1/2 cups of flour and everything else but the butter in the stand mixer with the dough hook and mix on medium until the dough starts to come together. Feel the dough with a wet clean hand and see if it is very sticky or a bit too dry. Adjust the flour and water to get a nice smooth, slack dough that isn't overly sticky but also is not too stiff.
- Add the cubed butter and continue kneading until the butter is fully incorporated and the dough is smooth. Check the window pane test to make sure it is fully developed. If not, continue kneading until it is.
- Move the dough to a greased dough bucket or bowl and cover and let rise until doubled. 1 hour to 1.5 hours depending on the temp in your house.
- Turn dough onto a lightly floured counter and divide into 6-8 pieces depending on how big you want the rolls and shape them (see my link in post on how to shape sandwich rolls). Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and cover with greased plastic wrap.
- Allow to rise for another 30-45 minutes until a finger pressed gently into the dough doesn't bounce back and they are nearly doubled in size. Slash the tops straight down if you want to.
- Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes. The internal temp should be 200 degrees and they should be golden brown when done. Move to a rack to cool.