1 cup milk, warm
2 TBSP sugar (or honey)
1 envelope active dry yeast
1 cup mashed potatoes
1 TBSP + 2 TBSP butter, melted
3-4 cups flour
Pinch of salt
Oil
Combine milk, sugar,and yeast in mixing bowl. Let stand ten minutes until frothy (this ensures your yeast has "activated" and will cause your dough to rise; no froth, dump and start over).
Next add mashed potatoes (I usually do this with leftovers or quickly prepare an instant variety), pinch of salt, and 1 TBSP melted butter.
Mix in flour, 1/3 cup at a time to form a soft dough. It may only take three cups. You don't want it to be sticky BUT you want it to not keep form. If you make bread, you don't want a stiff dough.
Scrape bottom of bowl and mix five minutes. Put into oiled bowl and let rise for an hour until doubled.
Heat oven to 350F. Lightly dust your surface and hands in flour and fold out dough. Knead just enough to get air out of the dough, about a minute.
Using a dough cutter, cut dough in half, and each half into 8-10 pieces. Gently knead each piece into a ball pinch ends underneath. Place each ball of dough into a greased pie pan and gently butter the sides of each ball using the remaining 2 TBSP melted butter as you add it to the pan. I spaced mine out about 1/4 of an inch. Repeat with second half of dough.
Cover and let rise about 15 minutes. Butter the tops of the rolls and bake thirty minutes until golden. Remove from oven and immediate butter the tops*.
*Instead of using this dough strictly for rolls, I used the second half of my dough to make a bread loaf. Simply put it in the loaf pan and allow it to rise 15-30 minutes until about an inch about the loaf pan at its highest peak, then bake 30-45 minutes.
