Better-Than-Texas Roadhouse Rolls — Soft, buttery, fluffy, and light this easy COPYCAT recipe for Texas Roadhouse rolls with cinnamon honey butter is INCREDIBLE! Perfect for family gatherings, holiday meals, or anytime you’re craving warm homemade dinner rolls! An approachable recipe even for those who have never made dinner rolls and are novices.
Table of contents
If you’re not familiar with it or have never heard of it, there’s a national restaurant chain called Texas Roadhouse and while they’re not super popular in California where I live, I have dined there in the past.
And let me tell you, the most memorable thing for me on their menu are the Texas Roadhouse dinner rolls. They’re soft, buttery, fluffy, and light. The rolls are brushed with melted butter after baking which is wonderful.
Texas Roadhouse rolls are served with cinnamon honey butter which melts into the crevices of the freshly baked rolls.
Between the smell of bread baking and the cinnamon honey butter, your house is going to smell divine. It’s the type of incredible scent that causes everyone to come into the kitchen and ask what you’re making!
Whether you want to make these rolls for a special occasion like an Easter or Mother’s Day celebration, for the holidays as a great side for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, or graduation or game day parties, these homemade dinner rolls are an absolute hit with everyone!
Even if you’ve never made homemade bread or dinner rolls before, this copycat recipe is easy to follow, straightforward, and completely approachable even for novices.
Ingredients for This Recipe
To make this copycat recipe for Texas Roadhouse rolls, you’ll need the following very common and easy-to-find fridge and pantry ingredients including the following:
For the Dinner Rolls:
- Warm milk
- Active dry yeast
- Granulated sugar
- Large eggs + egg yolks
- Light brown sugar
- Melted butter
- All-purpose flour
- Salt
For the Honey Cinnamon Butter:
- Unsalted butter
- Confectioners’ sugar
- Honey
- Cinnamon
- Vanilla extract
Note: All ingredients amounts are listed in the recipe card section when you keep scrolling down.
How to Make Copycat Texas Roadhouse Rolls
Follow my straightforward steps and even if you’re new to making yeast breads and rolls, that’s okay because this is a very approachable and do-able recipe. Let’s get started.
Step 1: To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, add the milk, yeast, and some of the granulated sugar. If you’re doing it by hand, use a large mixing bowl and wooden spoon.
Step 2: Proof for 5 minutes. This means check for proof that the yeast is alive and well, meaning the yeast mixture is bubbly and foamy looking.
Step 3: Add the eggs, yolks, sugars, and melted butter.
Step 4: Add the flour, salt, mix, and swap in the dough hook for the paddle attachment. Knead on medium speed for 6 minutes, or until the dough bounces back after pushing on it.
Step 5: Remove it from the mixing bowl, and either spray that mixing bowl or another large bowl with cooking spray, cover with plastic wrap, and allow the dough to rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
Step 6: After 1 hour, transfer the dough to a floured surface and roll it out with a rolling pin to ½ inch thick.
Step 7: Slice it with a pizza wheel it into about 40 pieces.
Step 8: Transfer the pieces of dough to large baking sheets and allow the dough torise for 30 to 45 minutes or until doubled in size.
Towards the end of this time, preheat your oven to 350F.
Step 9: Bake for 35 minutes, or until golden browned.
Step 10: Brush with melted butter immediately after baking.
Step 11: Make the Cinnamon Honey Butter by beating together all the ingredients.
Step 12: Serve the warm rolls with honey cinnamon butter and enjoy!
A Few Notes About the Texture of the Dough
You may end up cursing this Texas Roadhouse dinner roll dough because it’s very soft, tacky, and sticky. If you’re kneading by hand rather than in a stand mixer, it’ll want to stick to your hands and in the mixer, it’ll be prone to sticking to the sides of the mixing bowl.
However, this serves the very important purpose later on that your finished rolls turn out soft, light, fluffy, and they just melt in your mouth!
Flour and Dough Tips
Don’t over-flour this dough. The more flour you add to the dough, the denser and heavier your finished Texas Roadhouse rolls will be – and that’s not what you want!
Try to live with this sticky, tacky, and pretty wet dough. Keep reading below for my dough tips and suggestions so your rolls turn out perfectly.
- This dough is wet, sticky, and tacky.
- If the dough is so sloppy and you are struggling to get the dough to come together, add a couple tablespoons of additional flour.
- If you’re struggling to knead it in a stand mixer, and it just won’t come together or clear the sides, add a few more tablespoons flour.
- If you’re struggling to knead it by hand, toss out a couple more tablespoons of flour on your work surface.
- When kneading the dough you can test to see if the dough has enough elasticity by pressing it. If it springs back it’s ready. If it stays pushed in, keep kneading.
- It should not be a hard dough in the least. It’s very soft and supple
- Your fingers will easily make imprints and it won’t be difficult or a hard press to make an imprint.
- If it is hard to make an imprint, added that indicates that too much flour has been
- Your hands may likely feel like they are stuck to the dough if kneading by hand or when transferring or holding the dough to take it out of your stand mixer.
- This is a tried and true recipe so the flour, if you need to add any, will only vary by 1/4 cup MAX. And that will only be due to the fact that we’re not measuring on a scale in grams. If you were, scales make it right on the money every time.
- Sometimes if you’re making bread on a very humid day or it’s raining and there’s more moisture in the air, you’ll also need a bit more flour. Again, 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) maximum.
Recipe FAQs
Yes, you can swap water for the 2 1/3 cups of milk that’s called for in this dinner roll recipe. Note that the rolls may not taste quite as rich and decadent, and the rising time may increase since water doesn’t have the natural sugars that the yeast feeds from that milk has, but water will theoretically work.
This recipe has not been written, tested, or developed to start swapping out with whole wheat flour. That’s because whole wheat flour doesn’t rise as quickly and easily as all-purpose flour so you’d have to do some experimentation on your own. So the short answer is no, you can’t use whole wheat flour. Make this recipe exactly as written for optimal results.
If you do want to make a whole wheat flour recipe, I suggest my Honey Whole Wheat Bread recipe or my 100% Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls recipe.
I only use and bake with King Arthur Flour All-Purpose Flour, no exceptions. Cheaper flours never yield the same results and that’s because King Arthur brand has a slightly higher protein content in their flour, which means the gluten content is slightly higher, which means that your cakes, cupcakes, rolls, and bread will all rise nicer, better, and fuller.
I typically use 2% because it’s what I keep on hand most often. However, skim, 1%, whole, non-dairy such as soy, almond, or cashew milk, are all fine options.
Not everyone has a stand mixer and that’s just fine. You can certainly make homemade rolls without a stand mixer. If mixing your dough by hand and then kneading it by hand, the dough needs to come together, and needs to reach a point where it springs back when pushed on. It’s a moist and shaggy dough but you should be able to work with it and It shouldn’t be sticking to your hands like crazy.
If it’s still sticking after kneading it, throw a little extra flour into the dough and knead it for a few more minutes.
Handheld electric mixers are not powerful enough to create or knead bread dough. It’s either a stand mixer or make these rolls by hand.
If all you have is a hand mixer rather than a stand mixer, do everything by hand since your little handheld electric mixer isn’t cut out for this heavy duty task and you’ll just end up frustrated!
Yes, it’s possible to halve the recipe. However, if you’re going to the work of making homemade rolls, you may as well make a sufficient quantity is my thinking.
People will eat more than one roll. Heck, some people may eat three! Plus, you can freeze baked-off rolls for up to 4 months. It makes it nice on a busy weeknight in the future to simply grab a half dozen previously-baked dinner rolls from your freezer stash. Your family will thank you!
Although yes, halve all the ingredients quantities if you want to halve the recipe. But don’t halve the rising time, the baking time, and so forth.
Tips for Making These Rolls
Be sure to also read the FAQs mentioned above before making these Texas Roadhouse dinner rolls!
Activate the Yeast
If the active dry yeast does not froth during the initial proof time, it may be dead due to being expired. Or due to the milk being too hot. If it doesn’t froth, start over.
I don’t like to guess if my milk (or water) are the right temperature because this is a critical aspect and element of the recipe. Too cold and the yeast don’t activate. But too hot and you kill the yeast and need to start over.
Therefore, I always use a digital thermometer and take the temperature of the liquids and make sure the temperature is where it should be and don’t guess. You shouldn’t guess either.
Rising Time
Rising time will take longer at cold room temperature than at warmer temps. If you’re making the rolls in the dead of winter in a cold kitchen, it’s perfectly normal and OK if it takes the dough and rolls longer to rise (more than 90 minutes the first rise, and more than 30-45 minutes the second time). Be patient until they’ve doubled in size.
If you have 3 to 4 sheets of rolls, but only 2 sheets fit in your oven at one time, it’s fine to leave the others covered with a tea towel, at room temp for the 35 minutes or so it takes the first round of rolls to be baked off.
Baking the Rolls
When you’re baking the rolls, I recommend rotating your baking sheets once midway through to ensure even browning. And since all ovens run a bit differently, start checking the rolls at about 25 minutes just in case you have a hot oven.
However, if they’re not done at 35 minutes which is my suggested baking guideline, continue to bake until they ARE done! Again, all ovens run differently and when baking two sheets at once, it can sometimes slow things down a bit.\
Not Enough Oven Space?
If you’ve never made 40 rolls, you may be wondering how you’re going to pull it off! Here’s what I suggest:
- Bake two sheets of 12 rolls at once (24 rolls).
- Allow the remaining 16 or so rolls hang out on your counter while the first 24 are baking. This is fine.
- Bake the final 16 rolls as soon as the first 24 come out of the oven.
- Only use the middle two oven racks!
- Don’t attempt to bake all 40 at once (even if you do have 4 or 5 large baking sheets). None of them will come out well.
Storage Instructions
In the fridge: Your Texas Roadhouse copycat rolls will keep in an airtight container at room temp for up to 3 to 4 days. Don’t store them in the refrigerator. It will just serve to dry them out and harden them. Extra honey butter with cinnamon will keep airtight in the fridge for many weeks.
In the freezer: Since the recipe makes about 40 rolls, you can also freeze some of them. Bread, in general, freezes very well and these Texas Roadhouse Rolls will keep airtight in a freezer bag in the freezer for up to 4 months.
To thaw from frozen: I suggest taking them out and letting them sit at room temp on your counter to thaw. And before serving, zap them in the microwave for 15 seconds or as necessary to make them just a little bit toasty.
What to Serve with Copycat Texas Roadhouse Rolls
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Texas Roadhouse Rolls
Ingredients
Rolls
- 2 ⅓ cup warm milk*
- 3 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar, divided
- 2 eggs + 2 yolks**
- 1 ½ tablespoons light brown sugar, packed
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 8 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted for brushing on rolls after baking
Cinnamon Honey Butter:
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
- 3 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 – 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
Texas Roadhouse Rolls
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add the warm milk, active dry yeast, 2 teaspoons granulated sugar, and proof for 5 minutes. Tips – Warm the milk according the temperature on the package directions on the brand of yeast you're using. The temp can vary from brand to brand. For this recipe, in general I aim for between 105-110F. Check the temp with a digital thermometer and do NOT guess. Proof means "to prove" that the. yeast is alive and well. You will know this if the mixture turns bubbly and frothy looking. If it does not, it means that the yeast isn't alive and your bread won't rise later on. So you need to start over until you see bubbles and a frothy looking mixture. If you're doing this by hand, use a large mixing bowl and wooden spoon.
- After 5 minutes, add the eggs, yolks, remaining granulated sugar, brown sugar, and beat momentarily to combine.
- Add the flour, salt, and beat momentarily to combine.
- Switch to the dough hook, and knead on medium speed for 6 minutes. If you're doing it by hand, turn the dough out onto a floured countertop or work surface, and knead for about 10 minutes. Tips – This is a sticky, tacky, very moist dough. Resist the urge to add more flour because the more flour you add now, the denser and heavier the finished rolls will be. However, if you absolutely can't work with it (by hand) or it's sticking terribly to the side of the mixing bowl (if using a stand mixer), then add more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, up to about 1/4 or 4 tablespoons, or the bare minimum that you can get away with and still have the dough come together.
- After the dough is elastic and bounces back after pushing on it, spray a large mixing bowl (if using a stand mixer, you can spray the mixing bowl) very well with nonstick cooking spray, place the dough in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap (spray the side the dough will come into contact with), and allow it to rise for about 90 minutes, or until doubled in size. Tips – The colder your kitchen, the longer the dough will take to rise. If you're making the rolls on a winter day, it'll take longer for them to rise (maybe 2 hours, or a bit longer), so wait as long as it takes.
- After the dough has doubled in size, punch it down.
- Flour a clean countertop or work surface, and roll the dough out into a large rectangle, about 16×20-inches, and that it's 1/2-inch thick. Tips – You can also choose to only roll out half the dough and stash the other half in the fridge for another few hours. This will slow down the rise. Make sure it's kept in a sprayed bowl and covered with plastic wrap until you're ready to bake it. This is advantageous if you know that you can't handle rolling/rising/baking off 40 rolls at once.
- Using a pizza wheel, slice the dough into about 40 pieces.
- Spray large baking sheets (up to about 4 or 5 if you have that many) with cooking spray, and transfer 12 pieces of dough to each baking sheet, spaced 1/2-inch apart. Tips – If you don't have that many, just let the dough hang out on your countertop, cover it with a tea towel so it doesn't dry out, and separate the pieces so they're 1/2-inch apart.
- Allow the dough to rise again for 30 to 45 minutes, or until doubled in size. Towards the end of this rise, preheat your oven to 350F.
- Bake for about 35 minutes, or until rolls are lightly golden browned. Tips – Rotate the baking sheets once midway through baking to ensure even cooking and browning. Bake on the center two oven racks. Do not bake more than 2 baking sheets at a time. The third and fourth baking sheets (or rolls 24 through 40) or the second overall round of baking needs to happen after you bake off the first 24 rolls. Don't attempt to bake them all at once as none will turn out well.
- Transfer the rolls to a wire rack as soon as possible after baking.
- Brush the tops of the baked rolls with the remaining 1/4 cup melted butter. Set rolls aside momentarily.
Cinnamon Honey Butter
- To the bowl of a stand mixer, or large mixing bowl and handheld electric mixer, add all the ingredients, and beat on medium speed until smooth and fluffy.
- Serve rolls with the cinnamon honey butter, or as desired. Rolls will keep airight at room temp for up to 3 to 4 days, or for up to 4 months in the freezer. Don't freeze unbaked dough. Extra cinnamon honey butter will keep airtight in the fridge for many weeks.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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How. Can I cut the. Texas. Roadhouse. Resipe. In. Half. This resipe makes to much. For me. Please. Help. Thank. You
You would just halve all the ingredients. Rise times and bake times will remain roughly the same, although may be a bit quicker.
Do you have any of the ingredients measurements by weight, especially the flour?
I generally do not weigh my ingredients and just go by the feel of the dough. However, approximately 150 grams to 1 cup is a rough estimate for flour. But again, I didn’t weigh it when making these rolls and you could use less, 130ish. As I wrote in the post, you want a pretty sticky dough for the lightest melt in your mouth rolls!