From the Breadbox ~ Aloha Rolls, Let's Knock Off of a King!

King's Hawaiian Rolls are uniquely sweet, yet savory, soft pillows of yeast bread. They're extremely light in texture. Once you taste them, you'll be hooked! This was my first attempt at knocking off a king... not too bad, huh? There are many, many knock off recipes for King's on Pinterest. I selected a few that made the most sense, read the reviews and made my own adjustments to the recipe ingredient amounts, based on comments about flavor, consistency and such. So, the recipe here is influenced by King Arthur Flour, Carlsbad Cravings and Craftsy...with a bunch of me thrown in!

This is the strangest line up of bread ingredients that I have ever seen! Seriously! Pineapple juice??? Yep! It's amazing...this one's a MUST try!! Okay, where'd I put my notes? Here we go...

Aloha Rolls

3 cups all purpose flour or bread flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 package of active dry yeast
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
4 tablespoons soft butter
2 tablespoons honey (I used orange blossom honey)
2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk (save the egg white for the wash)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

See? I told you it's like no bread recipe, ever! You're going to be amazed! Ready?

Our first step is to make a curdled looking mess! Heat the pineapple juice and the milk and put them, along with the brown sugar and yeast, and half a cup of flour, into your mixer bowl. It's the reaction between the pineapple and the milk that makes it do that. It'll work itself out, in the end...that's what matters most! Let it sit for 15 minutes.

While the curdled mess is working its magic on the yeast, mix up the dry ingredients...the rest of the flour, the cornstarch and salt. Set it aside.

After the 15 minutes is up, add in the 2 eggs and the one yolk, the honey, and the vanilla. Mix this well.

Smoosh and smear the butter across the surface with a spatula...fun times!

Mix in the dry ingredients, using your dough hook. Do this about a cup at a time, letting each addition mix in well before adding the next. This is a very sticky dough. If you are a bread baker, you can look at the list of ingredients and know it's too much liquid for the amount of dry ingredients. It's gonna be okay.

See? This is what I got after all the dry went into the wet. And, it's a humid day, too, which also affects our baking. I added more flour, two tablespoons at a time, till I got to a manageable stage. It was still extremely tacky. Add as little extra flour as possible to get it manageable, as the more you add, the heavier the rolls will be. I ended up adding a bit over a half cup of flour to this. Overall, knead for 5 minutes...you want the dough to pretty much clean off the walls of the mixer bowl.

This dough will stick to your fingers like glue! Wet your hands and get it out of the bowl, shape it into a ball and place it in a butter sprayed bowl to rise. Let the dough rise, covered, in a warm place until it's doubled. Depending on how warm your kitchen is, this can take anywhere from and hour and a half to two and a half hours. Mine took the latter.

Chef's Note: Check the dough at and hour, and again at an hour and a half. If the dough hasn't risen fully, give it a fine spritz of water with a spray bottle, so it doesn't get a hard skin

Punch the dough down gently and roll it into a log. Its rest has calmed it down in attitude quite a bit!

Cut the log in half...each half in half...and each of those into fourths. You'll have 16 rolls, about 2 oz. each.

Spray a 9 x 12 baking dish with non-stick spray. Roll each dough parcel into a ball, pinching the bottoms and shaping gently. Line them up 6 down the center and 5 down each side. This made really big rolls. You could make smaller ones, if you want.

Cover the rolls with a tea towel and let them rise until double. You'll notice the cute beachy motif ;)

It took my rolls another two hours to rise. Towards the end, get your oven pre-heated to 375 degrees farenheit. When the rolls have risen, mix the reserved egg white with a splash of water to make an egg wash. Brush this egg wash gently over the surface. It won't take all of it...just discard what you don't need.

Bake the rolls for 20 to 25 minutes, until they're golden brown and delicious! Remove from the oven and brush the tops with a little softened butter

The finished product...I used bread flour in my experiment with this recipe, as was recommended by the King Arthur recipe, because I figured that a flour mill would know best which flour would achieve the best results. I may have erred in that assumption!

While these rolls tasted spot on, with the tweaks I did to the flavor agents, the actual texture was far from the light airiness we find in a King's Hawaiian Roll. It had a beautiful full texture that a regular yeast roll would have. The other recipes suggested all purpose flour, which I will try the next time I make these. And, I'll hold back on adding extra flour, and leave the dough raggedy. I may try inserting a refrigerator rest period after the first rise, like we do for our Garden House Rolls, which DO have that light, airy quality. But, I have a sneaking suspicion that King's Hawaiian actually may use a specially fine milled flour to create their light airiness...

Give this a try, I know you'll enjoy the flavor, as they're out of this world good! With that, I'll get us back to the kitchen to do some Garden Gate Lemon Thyme Rotisserie Chicken...everyone have a beautiful Monday, and keep on Steemin' on!

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