Homemade Yeast Rolls, or Store-Bought Yeast Rolls: That is the Question

In my family, Thanksgiving isn’t about cherished recipes or football or even giving thanks. It’s about competition.

My mother’s people are from north Alabama, and many holidays of my youth were spent in her hometown of Decatur, where my grandmother lived four blocks from her sister, my Great Aunt Mary.

Mary liked to entertain. She and her husband never had children, so they—or so it seemed to my ten-year-old eyes—spent their leisure time hosting friends, drinking cocktails, and playing cards. Whenever my mother and I were in town, I always looked forward to supper at Mary’s. We’d sit at her perfectly appointed dining room table where she served me iced tea in a fancy glass, and I would wait patiently for my favorite part of the meal: the rolls. I always tried my best to hold my manners in check, but I always ate more than my share. 

On one of our holiday visits to Decatur, there was some confusion about Thanksgiving dinner. My grandmother wanted to host everyone at her house, but my Great Aunt Mary was expecting us at hers. After a lively one-sided conversation that I overheard my grandmother having on the wall-mounted rotary-dial phone in her kitchen, it was decided: Mom and I were to have two Thanksgiving dinners, one with Grandmother and one with Mary. But they were so sore with each other that they would only be hosts, not guests in each other’s homes. And so it was. Mom and I had two practically identical Thanksgiving dinners in one day at two different houses just four blocks apart. Only one thing was different: Mary’s rolls.

Years later, Mom and I were laughing over the ridiculousness of it all, and we had an argument of our own. Mom was sure that Mary never let anything grace her table that wasn’t homemade, especially her yeast rolls. But I had my doubts. They were just so perfect, those little rectangular Parker House rolls, kept just the right kind of warm in a bread basket lined with a pressed linen napkin. In fact, they were almost too perfect. What added to my doubt was another one of my favorite things that Mary served: coconut cake with lemon curd. It was an extra-special occasion when that particular brick-shaped dessert hit the table, but it took one fateful trip down the grocery store’s freezer aisle to shatter any illusion that it might have been homemade. 

Mary and Grandmother are long gone, but thank goodness I still have Sister Schubert and Pepperidge Farm.

Sometimes we just have to fake it to make it.

* * *

If you know anyone from north Alabama, you’re likely familiar with Cotton Country Cooking, the community cookbook published by the Decatur Junior Service League. It has been my family’s recipe bible for as long as I can remember. I have my grandmother’s copy and, while there isn’t a recipe for Parker House rolls or even yeast rolls—another clue in the Mystery of Mary’s Yeast Rolls—there is a recipe for Beer Rolls with a checkmark next to it in my grandmother’s hand, so I suppose she made them at least once. It’s the kind of recipe to use if you want to be able to say that you dirtied some dishes but don’t have time for all of that rising business and just want to get to the point already. 

Beer Rolls

1 tablespoon sugar
1 can beer (12 ounce can)
3 cups Bisquick

Mix ingredients together in bowl. Spoon into greased muffin tins. Bake at 400* for 12 to 15 minutes. Yields a dozen or more large rolls.

Don’t laugh until you’ve tried these! These closely approximate yeast rolls, and talk about quick--you won’t believe it!

-Mrs. Robert H. Hosey

From Cotton Country Cooking (1972), p. 212.