Garlic Cheddar Skillet Dinner Rolls

Baked in a cast iron skillet and exploding with gooey cheddar and flavorful garlic butter, these garlic cheddar skillet dinner rolls are the perfect bread side for any dinner!

Figured you could use a little more cheese in your dinner rolls game. Fair assumption?

Putting these dinner rolls on ALL of your holiday menus is the best decision you’ll make all year, end of story. And I promise if you’re not 100% satisfied, I’ll come over and eat them for free.

But trust me, YOU WILL BE. We’ve been eating our weight in these rolls the past few weeks for good reason.

Not much can go wrong when you’re combining homemade bread, cheese, and garlic butter, let’s be honest.

Major props to you if you don’t accidentally eat them all before they make it to the table.

These Cheddar Skillet Dinner Rolls feature…

• A pillow-soft dinner roll texture
• Gooey cheddar cheese pull-apart style
• A flavorful garlic butter brushed on top of golden rolls

Making the Cheddar Skillet Dinner Rolls

(scroll down to the bottom of post for the full recipe)

Ingredients You Will Need

• Cheddar cheese
• Fresh garlic
• Garlic powder
• All-purpose flour
• Active dry yeast
• Water
• Egg
• Unsalted butter
• Vegetable oil
• Salt
• Honey

Choosing Your Yeast

We recommend using active dry yeast for these dinner rolls. We prefer using Red Star Yeast for all our yeast baking as it always leads to consistent bread results.

If all you have on hand is instant yeast, you can still make these dinner rolls! Rather than activating the yeast in water as you would with active dry yeast, mix the yeast in with the flour and proceed with mixing the dough.

Tips for Perfect Dinner Rolls

1. Measure flour correctly – we use the spoon-and-level technique for measuring flour as this will prevent over-measuring your flour. Use a spoon to scoop flour into the measuring cup, then level with the back of a knife.
2. Use water at 110F degrees – we recommend temping your water to ensure it’s not over 110F. If you use water that’s too warm, it will kill the yeast and your bread will not rise.
3. Knead dough properly – this step is where we develop the gluten in our dough which is crucial for forming the structure of the bread. You can knead by hand or use your stand mixer with the dough hook attachment.
4. Allow dough to rise until doubled – turn the dough into a clean greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
5. Let dough rise in a warm place – yeast dough loves warm environments for rising. We recommend 75F-80F for a rising environment in your kitchen.
6. Divide dough into even portions – we recommend using a kitchen scale for even portioning of the dinner rolls.
7. Bake rolls in cast iron skillet – we find that a cast iron skillet makes for the best texture in these dinner rolls. However, if you don’t have a skillet, a 9-inch cake pan will also work just fine.
8. Stuff cheddar cheese between dinner rolls – once your rolls are arranged in the skillet, stuff shredded cheddar cheese between rolls and sprinkle any remaining on top. This will give you that fun pull-apart effect when serving rolls.
9. Brush loaves with egg wash – this helps the loaves brown nicely while they bake. 
10. Let loaves rise until doubled – depending on temperature of your kitchen, this could take 30-45 minutes or up to an hour.
11. Bake rolls at 350F – the rolls will be a deep golden brown and should register 190F on a kitchen thermometer when it’s done. We highly recommend using a kitchen thermometer for this part!
12. Brush rolls with garlic butter – this gives the rolls an extra little punch of garlicky flavor!

Storing Dinner Rolls

These dinner rolls may be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days. For best results, we recommend reheating dinner rolls for serving so the cheese is warm and gooey.

You can also freeze these dinner rolls up to 1 month. Cool rolls completely after baking, then wrap well and freeze.

For serving from frozen, thaw rolls completely, then wrap in tin foil and reheat in 400F oven 10-15 minutes.

You guys, these rolls….they’re just SO pillowy-soft, exploding with gooey cheddar, and singing with rich garlic butter flavors. It’s no wonder we’re never hungry for the rest of dinner anymore.

Promise this is the best bread you’ll ever put on the table this holiday season! Please also note that breakfast is not off the table.

Save this recipe using the ‘save to recipe box’ button below. If you make it, please let us know! Leave a comment + star rating below, or take a photo and tag it on Instagram with #wholeandheavenlyoven.

More yeast baking projects to try out next time!

• Honey Oat Bread
• Milk Bread Rolls
• Jalapeno Cheddar Focaccia