Dinner Rolls - Test Run for Thanksgiving

This year, Kevin and I are hosting thanksgiving at our condo for my parents and my sister which I'm really excited for!  I want to try and make homemade dinner rolls from scratch (usually we just make the Rhode's frozen rolls) so I decided to do a test run today to see what would happen since I've never actually made rolls from scratch before.  Well, I'm glad that I did a test run because I made a few mistakes on these so I'm glad I didn't just wing it on thanksgiving. 

I found this recipe on http://www.allrecipes.com/, and with a 5 star rating and over 1,000 reviews I figured it must be pretty good.  The flavor of the rolls were really good, but the texture was a little off.  They were pretty dense instead of light and fluffy, and what do you know......I checked the expiration on my yeast and it said best by August 2009.  Soooo...glad I found that out now so that I can buy some new yeast.  Also, they weren't really browning pretty on top so I checked the recipe and realized I should have been baking them at 400 instead of 350 like I assumed.  Lesson learned - for next time I will be using fresh yeast and cooking at a higher temperature which I think will make them successful thanksgiving dinner rolls. 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

1/2 cup warm milk
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1/4 cup butter, softened

Directions:

1.Place water, milk, egg, 1/3 cup butter, sugar, salt, flour and yeast in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough/Knead and First Rise Cycle; press Start.

2.When cycle finishes, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide dough into 16 balls and place in a muffin pan. Brush some melted butter over the top of each roll.  Cover with clean kitchen towel and put in a warm place, let rise 1 hour. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

3.Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden.