Potato Dinner Rolls (with leftover mashed potatoes)

These Potato Dinner Rolls 🥔🍞🙌🏻 are soft, fluffy, and the PERFECT homemade rolls for your next family dinner or holiday celebration including Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter! Mashed potatoes are incorporated into the dough which keeps these potato dinner rolls moist, chewy, and rich tasting. Even if you’ve never made homemade rolls, these are easier than you think!

Easy Potato Dinner Rolls Recipe

If making homemade bread or rolls with yeast seems daunting, don’t let it scare you off!

• I’m here to guide you through every step of the way to ensure your homemade potato rolls turn out perfectly soft, fluffy, chewy, moist, and simply irresistible!
• If you’re wondering if there really are mashed potatoes in the dough, yes, there are. And it helps make the best rolls!
• Mashed potatoes help keep the dough moist and also help bind the dough.
• And the mashed potatoes help make this bread dough extra forgiving so that if you add a bit too much (or too little) flour, or over-knead (or under-knead) the dough, your potato rolls should turn out fine.
• There’s a make-ahead option in the recipe card section if you want to prep these rolls the night before and baked them off the next day.
• I love serving homemade freshly made dinner rolls as a side dish for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, Easter brunch, Mother’s Day, or whenever I have my friends and family together at the table. If you’re feeling like a sweeter roll, make my favorite overnight cinnamon rolls or carrot cake cinnamon rolls!
• Sometimes these rolls are called Amish Dinner Rolls or Amish Potato Rolls.

Ingredients in Fluffy Potato Bread Rolls

• Active dry yeast  – This is the kind of yeast that you should dissolve in warm liquid to make sure it’s really active. If it is, the liquid will turn frothy and foamy in about 5 minutes. I have not tried this recipe using instant yeast but you may be able to use it instead.
• Granulated sugar – This is “food” for the yeast so don’t omit the sugar.
• Whole milk – Warm it to the temperature indicated on the package directions. Don’t guess and use an instant read thermometer to be sure it’s not too hot (you don’t want to kill the yeast) but not too cool (the yeast won’t activate). I find whole milk to be best but you could probably sub with 2% milk. I’ve never used a plant-based or nondairy milk so I can’t comment on results.
• Large egg
• Mashed potatoes – Please see the section below for the 3 basic options you have here.
• All-purpose flour and salt – I’ve only made this Amish potato rolls recipe with AP flour. Bread flour would also likely work well. I don’t know if gluten-free flour would work or not.
• Melted unsalted butter, optional but recommended for brushing on the top of the baked rolls.

Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.

What Kind of Potatoes to Use in Potato Rolls

You need 1/2 cup mashed potatoes. You can use the following options:

1. Leftover mashed potatoes – This is the easiest option if you have them on hand, but not everyone does. You also want fairly plain classic mashed potatoes for these rolls. If you have a batch of loaded bacon cheddar mashed potatoes, don’t use those.
2. Making mashed potatoes on the stove – Use 1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes which is my go-to potato, although you can use a mixture of Yukon Gold and Russet potatoes. Peel and then boil until they start to break apart when picked up with a fork. Drain, and blend using a potato masher or handheld electric mixer, with 2 tablespoons whole milk and 2 tablespoons butter until smooth. This should make just under 2 cups of mashed potatoes. Just like with the instant mashed potatoes, you’ll need about ¼ cup more flour before kneading, this is most likely due to the butter content. The finished rolls taste and feel just like the ones using instant mashed potatoes.
3. Instant mashed potatoes – I us used a 4-ounce packet of Idahoan Buttery Mashed Potatoes. They’re very widely available, from Amazon, Walmart, Aldi, and other stores. Or use your favorite brand of instant mashed potatoes. Simply boil two cups of water, add the instant mashed potatoes, stir, let sit for a few minutes, then stir again. When making the rolls, you’ll need about ¼ cup more flour before kneading. The rolls taste extremely similar to rolls made with scratch mashed potatoes (above). The most notable difference is that the rolls come out a tiny bit crispier on the bottom, but soften after about an hour.

Note – If you don’t have leftover mashed potatoes and are either making mashed potatoes for this recipe or are making instant potatoes, you will have some leftover potatoes because it’s too hard to scale down recipes to hit 1/2 cup right on the nose.

How to Make Amish Dinner Rolls

This is a broad overview how to make dinner rolls with mashed potatoes. See the recipe card below for complete info.

1. To a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, add the yeast, sugar, warm milk, and allow the yeast to proof, or become frothy and bubbly; about 5 minutes.
2. Add half of the melted butter, egg, and beat well. Add the mashed potatoes and beat again.
3. Add the flour one cup at a time, the salt, and knead for at least 10 minutes using your dough hook on your stand mixer or you can do this by hand on a clean, floured counter top.

4. Make a smooth, soft dough ball, place it in a lightly greased bowl (same mixing bowl is fine), cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel, place in a warm nook, and allow the dough to rise for 1 hour.
5. After 1 hour, punch down the dough, roll it out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface, divide the dough into 12 evenly sized balls, place them in 9×13-inch baking dish, and allow them to rise for 1 more hour.
6. Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown, brush with melted butter, and serve!