The BEST Sourdough Rolls

These sourdough rolls use simple ingredients and can be made in 3 easy steps. You will get the benefits of sourdough along with the soft, buttery rolls you are wanting!

Have you dipped your toe into sourdough yet?

If not, what are you waiting for?? Get your sourdough starter going and make up these incredibly easy and delicious sourdough rolls!

These rolls are a great way to get your sourdough sea legs under you. In my opinion, they are pretty much fool proof.

If you have a good, healthy starter, then these will turn out beautifully!

I have some other tried and true sourdough recipes for you to chew on like sourdough monkey bread, sourdough cinnamon muffins, and sourdough focaccia.

To make your sourdough experience even easier, take your bubbly starter and convert it into a dry sourdough starter. Sound hard? I promise it’s a piece of cake!

Why You’ll Love These Homemade Sourdough Rolls

• Sourdough is a great option for people with gluten sensitivities! Sourdough rolls still contain gluten, but the phytic acid has been neutralized. This means the gluten is more easily digestible, and so all of the nutrients of the wheat are able to be absorbed! Sourdough is truly amazing.
• Do you need delicious rolls on your dinner table, but already have a cooking list a mile long? Much of this sourdough roll recipe takes place the night before! The first rise, or bulk fermentation, happens while you’re asleep. The next day, you just need to shape, have a brief second rise, and bake.
• They’re a crowd favorite! Let’s be honest – for children, the best part of any meal are the dinner rolls.
• Place the rolled buns close together in the pan to enjoy a tray of buttery, pull apart rolls. Or, space them out to serve beautifully shaped individual rolls. This recipe works both ways.

Tell Me About These Fluffy Sourdough Rolls

• Taste – These dinner rolls have that slight sourdough tang, without actually tasting sour! The combination of milk, butter, and sugar help soften the sourdough flavor, so you get the benefits of sourdough without sacrificing the typical dinner roll taste.
• Texture – This recipe will produce rolls with a soft crust and a fluffy, tender crumb.
• Ease – I use a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment to knead my bread dough for me. It’s much easier, and frees me up to attend to other tasks! It often takes less time as well.
• Time – All bread recipes require some length of rise time. However, when you consider how long you’re actively working with the dough, it’s really not that long at all!

Ingredients For Soft Sourdough Dinner Rolls

• Active Sourdough Starter – This is not a recipe for sourdough discard – you’ll need a bubbly and active starter. Notice that there’s no commercial yeast in this ingredient list, nor any baking powder. The dough relies entirely on the fermentation process in your starter, so be sure to have fed it recently!
• Melted Butter – You’ll be adding salt as well, so use unsalted butter if you can. If salted butter is all you have on hand, just use a little less salt in the dough itself!
• Milk – Milk has some sweetness to it, and the yeast in your starter culture will feed on that sweetness to ferment your dough.
• Water
• Salt
• Sugar – I use white sugar, but you can use sucanat, maple sugar, or rapadura.
• Flour – All purpose flour will work just fine, but you can also use bread flour for chewier rolls.

How To Make These Sourdough Buns in 3 Easy Steps

Bread recipes take a little bit of planning.

This is particularly true with sourdough bread recipes, because you’ll need an active starter to begin with!

To enjoy fresh, buttery sourdough rolls for a noonday dinner, feed your starter around midday the day before.

Then, in the evening, start making your dough!

Make Dough

1. Begin by melting butter, milk, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat, pour into a mixing bowl, and let this butter mixture cool to a warm temperature of around 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I use the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, but you can use a large bowl and a wooden spoon as well.
2. Add the starter and flour to the melted butter mixture, and start mixing! You’ll know the dough is ready when the sides of the bowl are clean, and the dough as a bouncy, elastic texture.
3. That’s it for the evening! Cover the bowl and set it in a warm spot for an overnight rise. If you’re starting this recipe in the morning, allow a rising time of 8 hours for this first rise.

Divide Dough

1. After you’ve let the dough rise, divide it into 8 equal pieces – or 16, if you prefer them smaller. Roll them into small, tight balls. It helps to have a slightly floured surface for this! Then, place them in a greased 9X13 baking pan. Do you want individual rolls rather than pull apart rolls? Use a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, to give your rolls more room.
2. Cover the pan with plastic wrap, and set it in a warm spot for a second rise of 2 hours.

Bake Sourdough Rolls

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. While the oven is warming up, use a pastry brush to brush the top of the dough balls with melted butter. Then, pop the rolls into the oven and let them bake for 25 minutes.

How To Store Leftover Fluffy Sourdough Dinner Rolls

You might wind up with some soft rolls leftover after your meal. Not to worry – these rolls will stay soft and fresh for 3 to 4 days after baking, as long as your store them in an airtight container on the counter. Don’t put them in the fridge! They will become hard and stale.

Do you need a Sourdough Starter?

If you don’t have a sourdough starter yet, you can purchase one online or make your own!

I have an entire post dedicated to making your own bread and sourdough starter.

Dry Sourdough Starter

Once you have your starter established, transition it into a dry sourdough starter.

A dry starter is low maintenance and extremely simple to create and use.

Sourdough Dinner Roll Recipe