Pumpkin Dinner Rolls

Name: Pumpkin Dinner Rolls
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Ingredients: 2 1/2 cup bread flour; 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree (, room temperature); 1 large egg (, room temperature); 2 tbsp brown sugar; 1 tbsp honey; 1 tsp salt; 2 tbsp unsalted butter (, melted); 1/3 cup full-fat milk (, warm); 2 1/4 tsp instant yeast; 1 egg (, for brushing); some melted butter (, for brushing)

These pumpkin dinner rolls are soft, light, and fluffy. They're buttery and bursting with pumpkin flavor, and they look so adorable. We're showing you 1 dough recipe that can be used in 3 different ways. Perfect to serve in your Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas dinner.

Pumpkin dinner rolls in a basket view from the front.

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Why This Recipe Works
Ingredients For This Recipe
Step-By-Step Instructions
Pumpkin Dinner Rolls 3 Ways
Recipe Expert Tips
How To Store And Freeze
Recipe FAQs
More Bread Recipes
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📖 Recipe
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Why This Recipe Works

Here's why we keep making these easy pumpkin dinner rolls, and whoever that we served them to, simply loved them!

Soft and fluffy buns. They are so light and tender! You'll know it when you lift them up after baking them. The crumbs are perfect for soaking all the delicious gravy from your Thanksgiving or Christmas feast. They're also perfect for making sandwiches!
One dough recipe, 3 ways of making the dinner rolls. We've been making these so much that we started using the same dough but making the rolls in different ways. We've written in detail below on how to do this!
Versatile. These pumpkin dinner rolls have a slight touch of sweetness to them. Omit the brown sugar if you want them more neutral flavor. Add more if you prefer them sweeter.
Freezer-friendly. They taste just as fresh from the oven. We simply reheat them a bit to bring them back to their glorious delicious state. And guess what? Nobody ever knew they were frozen!

Ingredients For This Recipe

Bread flour - It's not the same as all-purpose flour. It has a higher protein content, around 12-14% compared to 11% in all-purpose flour. That means the dough will develop more gluten when kneaded, resulting in more elastic, structured, and tender buns. It's not a 1:1 substitute with all-purpose flour. Swapping this recipe with all-purpose flour will result in a very sticky and not manageable dough.

Pumpkin puree - Canned pumpkin puree works the best as it has less moisture. We love using it for this recipe like in our chewy pumpkin cookies and my healthy mini pumpkin pies. Pumpkin puree is 100% cooked pumpkin that's been mashed, without other ingredients in it. Pumpkin pie filling is pumpkin puree combined with other ingredients like sugar, spices, etc. Don't confuse those two.

Honey - Our secret for soft bread rolls! It's like a natural bread softener and just a bit goes a long way. Honey also helps keep the moisture in the pumpkin dinner rolls, making them tender and delicious!

Instant dry yeast - This is a yeasted pumpkin bread recipe, so we'll be using yeast to rise the pumpkin dinner buns so they're fluffy. No need to rehydrate instant dry yeast. Add it directly with the rest of the ingredients. If using active dry yeast and fresh yeast, rehydrate it for 5 minutes with warm milk together with 1 teaspoon of sugar, until it's foamy. For the fresh yeast amount, multiply by 3.3, which for this recipe will be around 23g.

You can add 1-2 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice if you prefer. We use our homemade pumpkin pie spice in our delicious pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and our fudgy pumpkin cheesecake brownies!

⭐ See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

Step-By-Step Instructions

1. Make the dough. Add bread flour, pumpkin puree, egg, salt, brown sugar, honey, melted butter, warm milk, and instant dry yeast into a stand mixer bowl. Knead for 10 minutes using a hook attachment. You'll have a soft and sticky dough.

2. Leave the dough to rise. Oil your hands to prevent the dough from sticking. Form it into a ball and place it in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl tightly with cling film and leave it to rise until it doubles its size, for more or less 1-1.5 hours.

3. Shape the dough into pumpkins. Place the dough on a lightly floured kitchen top, and knead it briefly into a thick disk. Slice it into 16 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball, and cover them with a cling film to prevent them from drying out. Take one ball and tie it loosely with 4 kitchen strings to get 8 sections. Don't tie too tight. Flour your hands to prevent the dough from sticking as it's quite soft. See other ways to shape these pumpkin dinner rolls below.

4. Rise and bake. Place the pumpkin-shaped balls on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, with some space in between. Cover the pumpkin bread rolls loosely with cling film and leave them to slightly puff up, not until they double their size. Brush them with some egg wash and bake in a preheated oven at 350ºF(175ºC), on the middle rack, for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and while still hot, brush them with some melted butter. Leave to cool completely. Carefully cut the strings and remove them. Enjoy your pumpkin dinner rolls!

⭐ How to remove the strings easily. Cut in between the pumpkins' sections with a knife, to make removing the strings easier since they tend to get buried inside the buns. This also makes our pumpkin dinner rolls look neater, without having the pieces of the buns tearing out as we pull out the strings. Don't cut in too deep, just enough for the strings to come out.

Pumpkin Dinner Rolls 3 Ways

This recipe is so versatile that you can use the same dough recipe to make pumpkin dinner rolls in 3 different ways, which are making the pumpkin-shaped dinner rolls using the tying and the cutting method, and making the classic-shaped dinner rolls. Here's how.

1. Pumpin-Shaped Dinner Dolls Using The Tying Method

Tie. Make 16 balls. Cut 4 thin kitchen strings for each ball. Place 1 dough ball on top center of 1 string, and tie it loosely, not too tight. Do the same with the other 3 strings, creating 8 sections on the ball.
Rise. Cover the pumpkin-shaped balls loosely with a cling film. Let them puff up a bit, not until they double their size. Brush with egg wash, bake at 350ºF(175ºC), on the middle rack, for 20 minutes or until golden brown, and then brush with melted butter while still hot.
Remove the strings. Once cooled, gently cut in between the pumpkins' sections, to make it easier for the kitchen strings to come out. Don't cut too deep. Now cut the strings on top and gently pull them out. You'll get neater-looking pumpkins this way. Press pecan halves in the centers as pumpkin stems.

2. Pumpkin-Shaped Dinner Rolls Using The Cutting Method

Cut. Make 16 balls. Place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, with 2-3 inches between each other. Slightly flatten them. Coat your knife with some flour and cut each ball into 8 sections, leaving around ½ inch of the center untouched. Dip the end of a chopstick (or something similar) into some flour and poke into the center, making a hole of ½ inch deep, for the pumpkin stem.
Rise. Cover the pumpkin-shaped balls loosely with a cling film. Let them puff up a bit, not until they double their size. Brush with egg wash, bake at 350ºF(175ºC), on the middle rack, for 20 minutes or until golden brown, and then brush with melted butter while still hot. Press pecan halves in the centers as pumpkin stems.

3. Classic-Shaped Dinner Rolls

Shape. Place the 16 dough balls in a buttered 9-inch or 8-inch square pan. Double this recipe to make 24 bigger dinner rolls, and use a 13x9-inch pan.
Bake. Brush with egg wash, bake at 350ºF(175ºC), on the middle rack, for 23-25 minutes or until golden brown, and then brush with melted butter while still hot.

⭐ Our opinions on the pros and cons of each method.
Tying: The dinner rolls look amazing and perfect like real pumpkins, but they do require some extra time to tie each roll and remove the strings later.
Cutting: The dinner rolls don't look as amazing and real, but they are easier to do.
Classic-shaped: The easiest, of course! But they don't look that fun, do they?

Recipe Expert Tips

Use the spoon and level method if using cup measurements. Scooping the flour using the cup measurement will give you more flour than needed. That will result in tough and dense pumpkin dinner rolls. Fluff your flour, spoon, and fill it into the cup without compacting it, and then level it with the back of a knife. We highly recommend using a kitchen scale as it's more precise. We use it to measure our dry ingredients like flour and sugar.
Make sure the milk is hot, not warm. It should be around 110-115ºF (43-46ºC). Hot milk or liquid will kill the yeast, making the dough not able to rise properly, and the pumpkin roll bread will end up dense.
Leave the dough to rise in a warm and draft-free place. Don't leave the dough under the sun, nor in a windy area as it'll affect its ability to rise. We like to leave it on the kitchen counter where it's always warm. The colder the place is, the longer it'll take for the dough to rise.
Keep the dough in the fridge. If you're taking quite some time to tie the knots to shape the balls into pumpkins, then we highly recommend you keep the balls that you're not working on, in the fridge. This will slow down their rising process, giving you plenty of time to finish without rushing.
Don't tie the dough too tight. This is to give room for the dough to rise again after tying and giving the perfect look of pumpkin-shaped dinner rolls.
Always cover the dough with cling film. This is to prevent it from drying out during each rising process and while you're shaping the balls into pumpkins.
Turn them into normal dinner rolls. If you're not into pumpkin-shaped dinner rolls, then simply bake them as the typical dinner rolls in a greased pan.

How To Store And Freeze

Store - Keep these pumpkin dinner rolls in an air-tight container, at room temperature for 3-5 days. We highly recommend reheating them for a few seconds in the microwave to bring back their soft and fluffy texture.

Freeze - Place the baked pumpkin dinner rolls on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, without touching each other. Fast-freeze them in the freezer for 1 hour. Once frozen solid, keep them in an air-tight container, and back in the freezer for up to 3 months. Thaw them in the fridge or at room temperature. Again, don't forget to reheat them for a few seconds in the microwave, they'll taste as if they just came out of the oven!

Recipe FAQs

Can I use a fresh pumpkin instead of a canned one?

Yes. In our chewy pumpkin cookies post, we've written how to make homemade pumpkin puree for baking. Do refer to it. Basically, you bake the pumpkin, blend it into a puree, and then drain it to remove the excess moisture. This is important because excess moisture will affect the baked goods' texture, consistency, and baking time.

Can I make the dough in advance?

Yes. Make it one day ahead. Follow the recipe instructions to make the dough, without shaping it. Place it in the fridge, covered with cling film. The dough will rise slowly in the fridge. Bring it to room temperature, for more or less 1 hour. Follow the instructions to shape and bake.

Why are my dinner rolls not light and fluffy?

If there are no changes in the ingredients and their amounts, then there are several causes. 1) The milk was too hot, thus killing the yeast and making the dough not being able to rise properly. 2) Old or expired yeast. In time yeast will lose its strength. Although it's still not expired, if you've had it for a few months, chances are it gradually weakens. Use recent yeast. 3) Not enough kneading time. Knead the dough until when you press it with your finger, it makes an indentation and bounces back. If it doesn't bounce back, then knead it for a few minutes more. 4) Not enough proofing time for the first rise. The dough has properly risen when you lightly press your finger in it, it makes an indentation and the indentation doesn't disappear.

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