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Homemade Sourdough Dinner Rolls are an amazing recipe for super soft, fluffy bread rolls with a bit of tang from the sourdough starter.

A lovely easy homemade bun to make for any time! Pull-apart rolls are the best used for sourdough bread to feed your family for many different meals. You might also like to try our soft, buttery Parker House Rolls, Cottage Cheese Bread, Chipa (Argentinean Cheese Bread), Butter Swim Biscuits, or Braided White Bread, both have step-by-step instructions too.

Close up of big fluffy soft sourdough dinner rolls.

Helpful Items for This Recipe

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Kitchen Aid 8 Quart Commercial Mixer

Complete Bread Dough Mixer Machine with Dough Hook – Bread Kneader and Dough Maker

Anchor Hocking Glass Mixing Bowls, Mixed, Set of 10

Glass Measuring Cup Set, 4 Piece Set

What Ingredients Go Into Making Sourdough Dinner Rolls?

Ingredients are standard and are easily found. Here are some details on what we used.

Warm water – (80 to 95 degrees F)
Active dry yeast – You can use a yeast packet instead of measuring yeast
Turbinado (raw) sugar – Turbinado (raw) sugar can be replaced by white sugar
Eggs – large and refrigerated are fine.
Oil – Cooking olive oil
Sourdough Discard – (Active starter) This is the portion of your starter that is removed and discarded before feeding what’s left in the jar. The sourdough recipe can be found below.
Salt – Table Salt
Unbleached All-Purpose Flour – because all starters have a different consistency, you may need to add more flour.
Butter– Melted

How To Make Sourdough Dinner Rolls

Making sourdough rolls is labor of love but doesn’t have to be an all-day process. It is something that you go back to again and again as each step takes time in between for the dough to go through bulk fermentation and then proofing.

Let me walk you through the process here.

In a mixing bowl of a stand-up mixer, pour water, yeast, and sugar. Wait 5 minutes for the yeast to bloom.
Now start to mix the dough by using a paddle attachment (or use the dough hook the whole time) and adding in eggs, oil, salt, and sourdough discard.
Mix well for 30 seconds.

Overhead shot looking into a mixer with bread dough inside.

Now change to a dough hook if you weren’t already using and add 3 ¼ cups of flour and salt, gradually. Mix for 4 minutes.

Showing that dough is not sticking to a finger.

The dough may be sticky but when pushing in it, it won’t stick to your finger. If your dough is too sticky, you can add a ¼ cup of extra flour at this time. You should not have any flour dry in the bowl.

Overhead of bread dough in a white bowl.

Transfer to a large, oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
Put it in a warm place to allow for 60 minutes of rise time or until it doubles in size.
This is called bulk fermentation when the dough is in its first stage of fermenting in a large, single mass.

Once it doubles in size, transfer to a lightly flour surface and divide the dough into 12 equal parts.
On the counter or a work surface, roll each ball. I make a dome with my hand and roll the ball between my hand and the counter. The round balls are then transfered to a buttered 9×13 baking dish to proof.

Proofing your Sourdough Rolls

Next, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for another 30-45 minutes in a warm place. Until it doubles in size. This is called proofing when the dough is in its final stage of rising.
Start your oven at 375-degree F.

Overhead shot of sourdough dinner rolls in a baking pan.

Bake the rolls in preheated oven for 20 minutes. You can egg wash the buns if you like or butter them straight out of the oven.
As soon as they come out, brush with the melted butter on the buns.
Enjoy!

What is a Sourdough Starter?

A sourdough starter is a mixture of flours and water that sits over time and starts to ferment.

As the microbes eat the sugars in the flour, they exhale carbon dioxide, producing the bubbles that turn a flat, dense loaf into something light and fluffy.

That is why these dinner rolls are so amazingly light, fluffy and perfect for not only a side dish but as a bun for a slider too!

Sourdough bun with pulled pork and BBQ sauce.

Look at how amazing this looks with this Smoked BBQ Pulled Pork!! A masterpiece of two recipes coming together.

Smoky, juicy, flavorful pulled pork is the perfect match for the slight tang of a sourdough roll like this one. A BBQ dinner that no one will forget.

How To Make A Sourdough Starter

When making any sourdough bread you need a sourdough starter. This is where planning needs to come into consideration as it takes a long time to get your starter alive and working.

When doing a sourdough starter, I always follow the direction on King Arthur Flour website. They have great information and great recipes to help you get started playing with sourdough.

At first, if you start a starter, I use 1 cup of Whole Wheat flour + half a cup cool water.

On day 2 when I need to feed him, I discard half a cup and add 1 cup of Unbleached All-Purpose flour + ½ cup water room temp.

The unbleached flour here is important for the feeding as it contains more live culture, which is a requirement to get your starter active.

Fast forward 10 days and when your sourdough is nice and bubbly and has a sour smell, then you are ready for your first bread.

When a recipe requires an unfed starter, this means in the morning (I feed my starter in the morning) before feeding the starter, pour 1 cup or whatever the recipe requires into a measuring cup, and what is left in your mason jar, feed the starter with 1 cup flour, ½ cup water.

If your recipe requires using fed starter, then in the morning feed your starter and you can use it when nice and bubbly, around 4 to 6 hours later.

For the buns, it was unfed/discard starter, so pour before you feed the starter.

Also, if you will need a lot of discard, you should build up your starter 1 or 2 days ahead. You should always have approx. 1 cup of starter to feed at all times.

Does Sourdough Bread Taste Sour

Sourdough bread is made by the fermentation of dough as we had mentioned above. It has naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeast.

The sour taste or I would say tang is produced from the lactic acid.

Sourdough is the oldest form of leavened dough and has been around since the Egyptians. This type of bread can have varying degrees of sourness. Today’s recipe has a mild tang as most dinner rolls do.

Other bread can get a bit more mouth-puckering and as you play with sourdough you will see the variations.

This Sourdough Dinner Rolls recipe makes the best buns. Enjoy gorgeous fluffy, soft pull-apart rolls any time.

More Great Bread Recipes

Here are some other great bread recipes for you to try. From a classic brioche to a no knead pumpkin, a bread machine quick loaf and more. Bread making and bread baking is rewarding and can give you some of the best bread you have ever tried.

Homemade Brioche Bread

Pumpkin No Knead Bread

Super Easy Bread Machine Banana Bread

Apple Fritter Bread – Quick Easy Bread

Bread Machine Pumpkin Pie Spice Loaf

Square photo of dinner rolls in a baking pan.

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Sourdough Dinner Rolls Recipe

Tara Noland

Sourdough Dinner Rolls are the best pull-apart buns hot out of the oven any time. The lovely tangy flavor makes them perfect as a slider bun too. Perfectly soft and fluffy they will be what your family asks for.

4.71 from 17 votes

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Prep Time 15

Cook Time 22

Additional Time 1 30

Total Time 2 7

Course Breads, Muffins and Scones

Cuisine American

Servings rolls

Calories 187 kcal

Ingredients

½ cup warm water 80 to 95 degrees F
2 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon turbinado raw sugar
2 eggs
3 tablespoons oil
1 cup of sourdough discard
1 teaspoon salt
3 ¼ cups of unbleached all-purpose flour because all starters have different consistency, you may need to add more flour, approx. ½ to ¾ cup
1 tablespoon butter melted

Sourdough Starter

See instructions under notes

Instructions

In a mixing bowl of a stand-up mixer, pour water, yeast, and sugar. Wait 5 minutes for the yeast to bloom.
Now start to mix the dough by using a paddle attachment (or use the dough hook the whole time) and adding in eggs, oil, and sourdough discard.
Mix well for 30 seconds.
Now change to a dough hook if you weren’t already using and add 3 ¼ cups of flour and salt, gradually. Mix for 4 minutes.
The dough may be sticky but when pushing in it, it won’t stick to your finger. If your dough is too sticky, you can add a ¼ cup of extra flour at this time. You should not have any flour dry in the bowl.
Transfer to a large, oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
Put it in a warm place to allow for 60 minutes of rise time or until it doubles in size. This is called bulk fermentation when the dough is in its first stage of fermenting in a large, single mass.
Once it doubles in size, transfer to a lightly flour surface and divide the dough into 12 equal parts.
On the counter or a work surface, roll each ball. I make a dome with my hand and roll the ball between my hand and the counter. The round balls are then transferred to a buttered 9×13 baking dish to proof.
Next, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for another 30-45 minutes in a warm place. Until it doubles in size. This is called proofing when the dough is in its final stage of rising.
Start your oven at 375-degree F.
Bake the rolls in preheated oven for 20 minutes. You can egg wash the buns if you like or butter them straight out of the oven.
As soon as they come out, brush with the melted butter on the buns.

Equipment

AmazonCommercial Glass Measuring Cup Set, 4 Piece Set Includes 1 Cup, 2 Cup, 4 Cup, and 8 Cup

Anchor Hocking Glass Mixing Bowls, Mixed, Set of 10

Complete Bread Dough Mixer Machine with Dough Hook – Bread Kneader and Dough Maker – Dough Kneading Machine – Upgraded Wondermix Revolution Kitchen Mixer by Wondermill

KitchenAid KSM8990NP 8-Quart Commercial Countertop Mixer, 10-Speed, Gear-Driven, Nickel Pearl

Notes