This recipe for my homemade dinner rolls with feta cheese and bacon fillings came from me not having any Stilton cheese, which is what the original recipe that I adapted called for.
The original was from the Paul Hollywood cookbook for bread, which my husband (a British Baking Show convert) gave me for Christmas.
I hadn’t made anything from it, so I decided to try the cheese and bacon rolls because they had bacon in them, and duh, I knew they’d be good.
But with no Stilton in sight, I decided to use the feta that I had in the freezer instead, and BOY was it good!
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I’ve converted the original recipe for these fancy dinner rolls from grams to cups, since I think it’s annoying to drag a scale out for bread.
But if you want to do it the weighted-measure way, you can get the original cookbook on Amazon: Paul Hollywood’s Bread.
Homemade Dinner Rolls With Feta And Bacon
A delicious combination of feta cheese and bacon in savory yeast rolls.
Equipment
- 1 mixing bowl or stand mixer
- Measuring cups
- Measuring spoons
- blade to cut the dough into pieces optional
- 1 baking pan
- Parchment paper
Ingredients
- 4 cups AP or bread flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 Tbsp fast-rising yeast
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter
- 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups cool water
- 3/4 to 1 cup cut-up bacon pieces
- 1/2 to 3/4 cup feta cheese
Instructions
- Put the flour in a bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer if you don't want to mix it by hand.
- Put the salt on one side of the bowl and the yeast on the other side.
- Cut the butter into small pieces and mix it into the dough with your fingers or the dough hook of the mixer.
- Add the water in bit by bit until you have a soft, sticky ball and all of the flour is incorporated. You might not need all of the water.
- Flour the surface of the countertop and put the dough onto it. Knead it well for up to 10 minutes, or until it's a smooth ball with a stretchy texture and a smooth blister-looking surface. Add a little more flour as you need to if the dough is too sticky,, but try not to add too much.
- Put the kneaded dough into a large bowl and cover it with a towel. Let it rise to 2-3 times the original size, which might take up to 3 hours depending on how cool it is where you are.
- While the dough is rising, cook the bacon (or cut it into pieces if you're using pre-cooked.) Cut it into small pieces and set it aside for later.
- When the dough has doubled in size (at least,) turn it out onto a floured surface and press the air out by folding it over onto itself.
- When the air has been pushed out, press the dough out flat into a rectangular shape.
- Sprinkle the bacon pieces and crumbled cheese over the surface of the dough, then spread them out relatively evenly.
- Press the bacon and feta into the dough and fold it over itself a couple of times to make sure that everything is incorporated.
- Roll the dough into a log that's about 12" long.
- Cut the log into 16 equal pieces. If you start in the middle and then cut each of those pieces in half and repeat until you have 16 you'll be able to keep everything about even.
- If any of the pieces looks a lot smaller than the others, steal some dough from some of the rolls to try to even them all out.
- Put a piece of parchment paper on the baking pan.
- Roll the pieces of dough between your hands to form balls and arrange them on the pan in two circles of one roll in the center with 7 surrounding it with a little space between them.
- Cover the pan with a towel and let the rolls rise again until they've doubled in size again, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
- After an hour, preheat the over to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- When the rolls have risen to double the size, bake them in the center of the oven for about 25 minutes, or until they're golden brown on top and about 190 degrees F inside, using an instant-read thermometer.
- Eat them warm, or cool them on a rack and then store them in an airtight container in the d=fridge. Reheat them before eating since they're best when they're warm!
Tips for making the bacon and feta rolls.
There were some things that I changed from the original recipe other than the feta, so here are my tips for making the cheese buns.
- I used a container of crumbled feta, nothing fancy, but I wanted it to be a cheese that had a bite to it for a savory dinner rolls recipe. I put it in straight out of the freezer so that it wouldn’t get too mashed up when I added it into the dough. I don’t know that it would make much of a difference but it worked fine doing it that way.
- I used pre-cooked bacon and just cut up about ten pieces. You can add more if you want to, but that was enough to give the bread a good flavor but not make it too salty.
- The original recipe called for baking the dinner rolls at about 425 degrees for 20 minutes, but when I turn my oven up over 400 the heat funnels down the hallway and makes the smoke detector go off even if nothing is burning. So I don’t turn it up over 400 and I just extend the baking time for everything a little bit. You can bake the rolls at 425 (220C) for 15-20 minutes if you want to do that (as long as your smoke detectors don’t act up.)
- You might need to use two baking sheets if the rolls won’t fit on one.
- I used All-Purpose flour, but you can use bread flour if you want to. You might need to use a little more if you use the AP flour. Just add it as you knead the dough to get the right texture.
- What to serve with dinner rolls? I served these with soup for dinner, but they were also good for breakfast the next day! Reheating leftover dinner rolls can be done in the oven or the microwave for a short time, like 30 seconds at the most.
