Potato Rolls recipe

There's nothing quite as satisfying as warm bread in the dead of winter. Today, we're sharing one of our favorite bread recipes from Gardening the Amana Way. Enjoy!

Potato Rolls
3 to 4 cups flour
1/2 cup mashed potatoes
3 tablespoons sugar
2 packages quick-rise yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups water (tap or reserved from cooking potatoes)
3 tablespoons butter

Combine two cups flour, mashed potatoes, sugar, yeast, and salt in large bowl. Heat water and butter to 130 degrees. Stir into yeast mix. Add enough flour to make soft dough. Knead until smooth and elastic. Cover and let rest ten minutes. Divide dough into sixteen pieces and shape into balls. Place into two greased 9-inch cake pans. Cover and let rise until doubled. Bake at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes. Can also be shaped into a bread loaf.

Gardening the Amana Way, by Lawrence L. Rettig

Excerpt from ESTHER'S TOWN

A fireplace provided the heat and was the stove to bake bread and prepare the meals. No family intentionally allowed the fire to go out, even in the heat of summer, when a bed of coals was kept outdoors for use when needed for cooking. There were no matches. A trestle-like table and a cupboard supported on one wall were provinces of the housewife. On another wall a rifle, bullet pouch, and a powder horn hung from pegs. The luxury of kerosene lamps was to come later and electric light much later yet. A shallow dish of lard or other grease with a loosely twisted cotton rag in it for a wick provided illumination of a sort. More sophisticated and somewhat scarce were candles fashioned from a mold that was shared by the settlement—an improvement upon dishes of grease. But often an open fireplace provided the family's only lighting on winter evenings.

Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee