Easy Cheese Rolls

Today, I’m bringing you some absolutely delicious potato cheese rolls, friends. Made with Idahoan® cheesy Mashed Potatoes in the dough, these might be the tastiest cheese buns ever. This is a very easy roll recipe, and since yeast loves potatoes so much, the rolls rise quickly and have a ton of flavor. Let’s get to it, shall we?

You may also enjoy my potato sandwich bread and soft sandwich rolls, both of which are made with Idaho® potatoes.

For ease of browsing here are all of my bread and roll recipes. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheese Rolls, At a Glance

These rolls are easy to make and have a nice, rich cheese flavor. Here’s what to expect, in a nutshell.

✅Skill Level: Beginner/Intermediate
✅Skills: Straight dough method, shaping, rising, baking
✅Type: Dinner Rolls
✅Number of Ingredients: 8
✅Prep Time: 15 minutes
✅Rise Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
✅Cook Time: 30 minutes
✅Yield: 18 rolls

Jump Straight to the Recipe

Varying the Flavor with Idahoan® Mashed Potatoes

I am generally the girl who wants to make everything from scratch, including my mashed potatoes.

I’ve made other dinner rolls using Idaho® Russet potatoes, cooked and mashed, in the recipe. You can see how that works in my garlic Parmesan dinner roll recipe and garlic chive potato rolls.

This is the first time I’ve developed a recipe using “instant” mashed potatoes, and let me tell you, it won’t be the last.

One of the cool things about the different flavors is that you can use any flavor to make your rolls.

So if you use four cheese kind, you can add additional cheese and maybe some cayenne to make extra cheesy rolls.

And if you make these rolls with the Bacon and Cheddar Chipotle kind, you can sub in pepper jack for the cheddar and add a touch of chipotle powder.

Make the rolls your own by switching up the flavor of Idahoan® mashed potatoes you use. Easy!

Ingredients You’ll Need

• Any flavor of Idahoan® Mashed Potatoes. 2 caveats here: you want the Russet kind, not the Red-Skinned kind. And I’d make sure the flavor already has cheese in it just to up the cheese factor. Otherwise, the choice is yours
• whole milk
• butter
• salt
• egg
• sharp cheddar cheese (or whatever cheese will go best with your flavor of mashed potatoes)
• all purpose flour (I use King Arthur)
• instant yeast

Procedure

1. Pour the Idahoan potatoes into your mixer bowl
2. Add hot milk and melted butter and stir
3. Add egg and salt and whisk well
4. Pour the grated cheese on top of the mashed potatoes followed by the flour and then the yeast
5. Mix and knead until dough is soft, shiny, and stretchy
6. Let rise, punch down, shape the rolls
7. Let the rolls rise again
8. Bake
9. Brush with butter
10. Let cool to warm
11. Put in face

Do you have to rehydrate the potatoes before making the rolls?

Yes, but you rehydrate them as part of the process of making the bread.

Then, all you have to do is add the flour and yeast and mix and knead with the dough hook. It’s very easy, and you don’t have to plan ahead!

Shaping

This dough is really lovely to work with. It’s soft and stretchy, but not really sticky.

Once your dough rises the first time, press out all the gases, turn it out, and then divide it into 18 pieces. I actually use my scale to weigh the entire amount of dough and then divide by 18 (or the number of rolls I want, depending on how large I want them to be).

A note about portioning the dough

My dough turned out to weigh just over 43 oz, so I scaled each of my rolls at about 2.4 oz which is a really nice size for a dinner roll.

If you scale your dough at 4 oz and place them farther apart on baking sheets, you can make burger buns with this recipe. Or you can make mini rolls by scaling each at about 1.5 oz.

They’re your rolls, so you make them how you want them!

Here’s what the rolls will look like at different stages so you’ll know when they’re ready to bake and ready to come out of the oven:

You’ll notice in the first photo that the rolls touch each other in each row, but the columns don’t touch.

Making them a cozy place to rise

Then they spend about 45 minutes, covered, in the cozy microwave.

I make it nice and cozy in there by boiling a mug of water for 3 minutes, then moving it–carefully!–to the side and sliding in the tray of rolls. Once I close the oven door, it stays nice and moist and warm for quite some time.

The third photo shows the buns after they’ve risen. See how they now all look more oval than round? The columns still might not be quite touching, but once they look like this, you’re good to go.

The last photo shows how much they continue to rise in the oven. No space at all between any of the rolls, making them truly pull apart rolls. Nice!

A note about browning

I will note that these cheese buns don’t brown quite as deeply as some other breads and rolls I’ve made, and that’s because I didn’t add any sugar to the dough.

I’d normally add sugar to give the yeast something to nibble on, but yeast really loves potatoes and is quite happy to nosh on that without the need for extra sugar.

If you want slightly browner rolls, feel free to add 2 Tablespoons of sugar to the dough along with the potatoes. Otherwise, you’re (mostly) done.

As a finishing touch, I brush the tops of the rolls with butter right when they come out of the oven. The little specks you see on them are little crystals of smoked salt which I added just because I could. You can if you want to as well, but it is completely optional.

Recommended Equipment

This section contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my disclosure policy.

This is a very easy dough to make, and your mixer will do all the work. Since it’s not a very large batch of dough, you’ll be fine with a 4.5 qt or 5 qt mixer. For reference, I have a 6 qt mixer and you can see how much room is left in the bowl.

What To Serve with Your Homemade Rolls

Honestly, these guys are really good all on their own. But I wouldn’t say no to serving them alongside some chili for dunking.

And they’d be an especially nice accompaniment to tomato soup, too.

And, if you want to revel in carby goodness, serve them with my creamy pasta sauce. Now that’s a match made in heaven!

Questions?

If you have any questions about this post or recipe, I am happy to help.

Simply leave a comment here and I will get back to you soon. I also invite you to ask question in my Facebook group, Fearless Kitchen Fun.

If your question is more pressing, please feel free to email me. I should be back in touch ASAP, as long as I’m not asleep.

A Note About Measurements

My recipes are almost all written by weight, including liquids, unless otherwise specified.

For accuracy and consistency of results, I encourage you to buy–and use–a kitchen scale.

I promise that baking and cleanup will be so much quicker and easier.

This is the scale that I recommend for home use. I have owned and used one for years.

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12/04/2024 01:21 am GMT

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Easy Cheese Rolls Recipe

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Jennifer Field

These easy cheese rolls are made light and flavorful with the addition of 1/2 cup of Idahoan® Mashed Potatoes. I used the Loaded Baked Potato flavor, but you can use any flavor you'd like. Cheese buns are very easy to make, rise relatively quickly (so they aren't a huge time commitment), and your family will absolutely love them. And thanks to the potatoes, they stay fresh for several days. Nice!

4.80 from 5 votes

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Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 30 minutes mins

Additional Time 2 hours hrs 15 minutes mins

Total Time 3 hours hrs

Course Bread and Rolls Recipes

Cuisine American

Servings 18 buns

Calories 206 kcal

Equipment

• Idahoan®Loaded Baked Potatoes Mashed Potatoes
• Silicone Basting Brushes
• OXO Non-Stick Pro Cake Pan 9 x 13 Inch
• KitchenAid 6 Quart Mixer

Ingredients

• 13.5 oz about 1 2/3 cup whole milk
• 2 oz 1/2 stick unsalted butter
• 2.5 oz about ½ cup Idahoan® Loaded Baked Mashed Potatoes (or your favorite flavor)
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 oz sharp cheddar cheese shredded (for best results, shred your own cheese)
• 20 oz about 4-4 ½ cups all purpose flour (I used King Arthur)
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast

To Finish

• 1.5 oz 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Instructions

 

• Put the milk and butter in a microwave safe measuring cup and heat until the butter has
  melted and the milk is hot but not boiling, about 1 minute. Stir well to make sure all the
  butter melts.
• Pour the dry Idahoan® Mashed Potatoes into the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the
  dough hook.
• Add the milk/butter mixture, the egg, and the salt.
• Whisk or stir well to combine. Mixture will be very soupy.
• Add the shredded cheese to the bowl and top with all the flour.
• Spoon the yeast on top.
• Mix on low speed until a shaggy dough forms.
• Kneading, Rising, and Shaping
• Increase speed to medium and knead for 7-8 minutes, until the dough is smooth and
  shiny and very extensible.
• Shape the dough into a ball and place it back into the mixer bowl.
• Spray the exposed surface of the dough with pan spray or brush with neutral oil.
• Cover the dough with a lint-free kitchen towel and let rise in a warm place for 1 to 1 ½
  hours until doubled in bulk.
• Press the gases out of the dough and then turn it out onto a clean work surface.
• Portion the dough into 18 equal balls. If you have a scale, they should each weigh
  between 2.4-2.5 oz apiece.
• Press each scaled piece of dough into a disc and then gather up all the edges into the
  center, making a small ball. Place the ball, smooth side up, on the work surface and cup your
  hands around it, pushing it around in small circles on the counter and using that friction
  to tighten up the outside and make them nice and smooth. This will help the crumb to be more uniform and help them to rise more evenly.
• Place the shaped rolls into a sprayed 9”x 13” pan in 3 rows of 6. The rolls in each row will
  touch but each “column” of rolls may not. That’s okay.
• Spray the rolls with pan spray, cover with a lint-free kitchen towel, and let rise in a warm
  place until almost doubled in bulk again, about 45 minutes to an hour. After about 30
  minutes, preheat the oven to 350F.
• Bake the rolls for 25-35 minutes, until the rolls are lightly golden brown on the tops and
  the internal temperature reaches 195-200F. Since there is no added sugar in this recipe, the rolls will not brown as deeply as rolls with additional sugars in the dough.

To Finish:

• Remove the pan of rolls from the oven and immediately brush the tops with the melted
  butter.
• Allow the rolls to cool for 10 minutes in the pan and then use a spatula to help you slide
  them out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
• Reheat to serve, either wrapped in foil in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 350F or for a few
  seconds in the microwave.
• Store rolls at room temperature, covered, for 3 days.
• For longer storage, place in zip top freezer bags and press out as much air as you can
  before sealing and freezing.
  

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Notes

To Spread the Work Over Two Days

You can break up the work over 2 days if you like. After you knead the dough and then shape it into a smooth ball, you can put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, scale out the dough into 18 rolls, pan them up and let them rise until almost doubled. It will most likely take a bit longer since they’ll be cold from the fridge, so plan on maybe 2 hours before baking.

You could also let the dough rise the first time, press out the gases, shape and pan the rolls and then refrigerate them, taking them out of the fridge about an hour before baking.

To Store the Rolls

Thanks to the potatoes, the rolls will stay nice and soft at room temperature for 3 days or so. I keep them in a plastic

Nutrition

Serving: 1gCalories: 206kcalCarbohydrates: 26.3gProtein: 6.3gFat: 8.2gSaturated Fat: 4.7gCholesterol: 31mgSodium: 212mgFiber: 0.9gSugar: 1.3g

Keyword easy cheesy potato buns, how to make easy cheese rolls, potato cheese rolls

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And there you have it friends. Really good and easy to make potato cheese rolls made with instant mashed potatoes. Enjoy!

Thanks for spending some time with me today, and thank you to the Idaho Potato Commission for sponsoring my work.

Take care, y’all.

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