Pumpkin is the essential flavour of fall. Here, we add pumpkin to easy sourdough dinner rolls, the perfect bread for your hearty fall meals.
I love the rhythm of sourdough. Don't be shocked - these take you 12 hours but you're looking at under an hour of active work! The "souring" of the dough is what makes it easier for many people to digest, and it also adds so much flavour! And because so little of it is hands-on time, you can easily make these the day before a holiday so that you have more time for the rest of your meal when it's showtime.
Not a fan of pumpkin? Plain Soft Sourdough Rolls are also a hit here. If you want to be done even further ahead, I think a Dutch Oven Sourdough Loaf holds up better to being made in advance, so you could actually bake it the day before serving.
Key Ingredients
Flour - Either grind your own hard white wheat berries, or use organic unbleached bread flour. The extra protein here gives us the texture we are looking for.
Sourdough Starter - Make sure you are starting with an active starter for this recipe! This is our yeast and rise.
Milk - I always use whole milk (well, fresh from the cow milk here!) because the extra fat and sugar is needed again for texture.
Pumpkin - Use pumpkin puree, from a can or if you make your own it's fine.
Butter - Salted is my preference but if you only have unsalted, feel free to toss in ¼ teaspoon salt when you add the butter to the dough.
I have a Komo mill and think the flour it produces is exactly the right texture, even better than anything I can buy at the store. Living Sky Farms is a great shop to purchase from (use code VENISON at checkout!). Nutrimill is another popular brand I know people use.
How to Make Pumpkin Dinner Rolls
***See recipe card below for precise measurements and instructions.***
Step 1: Mix up your levain in a bowl. Cut up the salted butter to come to room temperature.
Step 2: Add levain and dough ingredients to a stand mixer and use the paddle attachment to combine.
Step 3: Switch to the dough hook and knead; then add in the softened butter.
Step 4: Allow dough to do a bulk ferment, including a couple stretch and fold sessions.
Step 5: Shape dough into evenly sized rolls and allow to proof for a few hours.
Step 6: Add egg wash and sesame seeds, then bake.
Step 7: I like to cool in the pan a bit before removing to a rack. These are best served once almost completely cooled.
What to Serve with Sourdough Dinner Rolls
- Instant Pot Venison Stew can be cooking while the rolls cook, and I love using multiple cooking vessels at once!
- Need a simple meal? A whole chicken baked in a dutch oven is easy and hands off.
- These rolls are the perfect addition to your Thanksgiving or Christmas spread. It makes a lot, so it's great for a crowd and sending home leftovers.
Sourdough Pumpkin Bread is another way to use up your pumpkin. Much like these rolls, you wouldn't say it's pumpkin when pressed, but it just gives an overall warmth to the dough. If you want more in-your-face pumpkin, go with Sourdough Pumpkin Muffins, which also make use of your sourdough discard.
FAQs
I prefer to use freshly ground hard wheat here. I just love the "whole wheat" of it, meaning my family is getting whole grains - yet it doesn't taste like "healthy bread" they might turn their noses up at. Always use hard wheat when doing sourdough or yeast, as it contains the necessary proteins for proofing. If you don't grind your own, an unbleached bread flour will do nicely.
I am an advocate of making uncomplicated, intuitive sourdough. However, sometimes you do want to use a scale. You use fewer dishes (yay for quicker dish duty!) and you can be more accurate at times. And while eyeballing rolls is easy, sometimes it's nice to have really uniform rolls in your pan for aesthetics and because they bake up evenly. So yes, pull out the scale for this recipe!
Reading through the recipe card might make your eyes cross. But it's quite simple to fit sourdough into your day. I love the rhythm of it - you just need to do a quick bit of math at times. The easiest way to time these is to start around lunch the day before you want to serve these, so they can cold ferment overnight. The next day, remove from the fridge at least 5 hours before you want to eat these. They will rest for 4 hours, then bake and cool in the final hour.
Photos by Dante from Shire by the Sea
More Sourdough Recipes
Hey friends, don't forget to follow me over on Instagram, cause if you like me here, I post there a LOT! I'm also on YouTube with tutorials and Facebook for all sorts of things.
If you like this recipe, I’d love if you reviewed it so others can find it easier. Sharing this recipe on Facebook or Pinterest is another way you can help us out at no cost to you. Thanks, xo Kate
Pumpkin Sourdough Dinner Rolls
Ingredients
Levain:
- 50 grams unbleached white bread flour or freshly milled hard white wheat berries
- 50 grams water around 75°F
- 50 grams active sourdough starter
Dough:
- 550 grams unbleached white bread flour or freshly milled hard white wheat berries
- 130 grams canned pumpkin purée
- 90 grams whole milk
- 50 grams honey
- 130 grams water
- 10 grams salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- Prepared levain
- 115 grams salted butter
Baking:
- 1 large egg
- 1 tablespoon whole milk
- Sesame seeds optional
Instructions
Levain:
- Mix levain ingredients together and let sit covered at room temperature (around 75°F) for 4 hours.
Dough:
- On a plate, cut butter into small pieces to be used after dough is mixing later. Allow to come to room temperature while prepping dough.
- In stand mixer with paddle attachment, add the following to the bowl: flour, pumpkin, milk, honey, water, salt, cinnamon, and levain.
- On speed 1, mix for a few minutes until ingredients are all combined and there aren't any dry spots.
- Switch to dough hook and mix on speed 2 for 5 minutes until dough is firm.
- Let dough rest for 15 minutes to hydrate.
- Butter should be warm enough to add. Turn mixer back on at speed 1 and add a couple pieces of butter at a time, allowing them to incorporate fully before adding more. This will take about 10-15 minutes total.
- Transfer dough to bulk fermentation container and cover*.
- 30 minutes after the start of bulk fermentation, uncover dough and use wet hands and stretch and fold dough over itself, rotate container 90 degrees, repeating this twice. Cover.
- Repeat stretch and fold set a second time about 30 minutes later, and cover again for remainder of bulk fermentation time (3-4 hours longer).
- Dough should be smooth and strong and puffy now.
To Make Rolls:
- Butter or grease two 9x13 baking dishes.
- Lightly flour dough, cutting board, and scale.
- Gently pull out the dough onto floured work surface.
- Divide dough into approximately 70 grams and gently shape into balls, placing into the greased pan. You can either eyeball or use a scale and divide your dough into 32 pieces.
- Place 16 rolls in each pan. They will be touching.
- You can bake the same day with a warm proof by covering and keeping it at room temperature in your kitchen for 3 hours.
- For more flavour development, cold proof over night in plastic bag in the fridge and bake in the morning after taking out of the refrigerator for 4 or so hours for final proof.
- Once they are fully proofed and puffed up to the edges, test with a gentle touch. Buns should be airy and soft. Proof a Preheat oven to 425°F and beat the egg with milk.
- Remove from bag and lightly brush egg wash on all the buns. Add sesame seeds if desired.
- Slide pans into oven, baking for 10 minutes.
- Swap pans top to bottom and turn them each 180°. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F and bake for another 20 minutes until tops of rolls are golden.
- Take out of oven and cool for at least 15 minutes before removing from the pan.
- I like to cool for 30 more minutes before eating.
Notes
- *Total bulk fermentation is for 4-5 hours at room temperature with folding and stretching interspersed in that time in 2 sets). Allow longer fermentation time for cooler houses.
- Start these before breakfast, bright and early, to eat for dinner that day. You'll need almost 12 hours, though if your house is warm you can speed things up a bit.
- Otherwise, you can start these around lunch, to bake around 24 hours later. Pop in the fridge overnight as stated above, then take out of the fridge at breakfast and bake them up later in the day. Essentially, if you are doing a cold proof overnight, remove from the fridge about 5 hours before you want to eat (4 hours to proof on the counter, and an hour ish to bake and cool).
Jackie
Easy peasy.. lots of flavor.. Thanks, Kate….