These honey whole wheat dinner rolls are beautifully golden brown with a soft and fluffy texture! They take less than 45 minutes to prepare, start to finish, and are so much healthier for you than their store-bought counterparts.
If you can believe it, whole wheat doesn’t mean hard as a rock/flavorless.
And these soft, super delicious rolls prove it. Before I started eating real food, I had never noticed the whole wheat flour sitting INCHES away from the bleached “enriched” white flour I used to buy. Now I would rather use white whole wheat flour over all-purpose any day, although I do make a few exceptions.
The use of honey in this recipe is completely optional (especially if you’re a vegan), but the honey lends so much flavor to these rolls. I always try to get my hands on local organic honey because I feel the flavor is so much deeper and richer.
I served these rolls alongside the world’s best beef stew. And I gotta say guys…that was one of the best dinners I’ve had in a looong time. Busy nights and lack of inspiration produced a long streak of boring, light meals. But these rolls with that beef stew totally broke the streak and brought on a huge wave of awesome dinner inspiration!
You’ll love these honey whole wheat dinner rolls because they take so little time to make and there’s hardly any labor involved, especially if you have a stand mixer. It’s a lovely thing, modern technology. We can use machines to knead dough. What cheaters we are.
I’m just kidding. It’s not cheating. It’s just…taking a shortcut.
A shortcut that leads to the best whole wheat rolls to grace this earth.
You don’t have to tell your family and friends how easy these rolls were to make. Let ‘em think you slaved in the kitchen for an hour and a half. That way you can get out of doing the dishes! 
You have GOT to try these rolls. Trust me, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s a recipe that we’ve made many times at my house.
Here’s the recipe:
- 1 cup + 2 tablespoons warm water
- ⅓ cup organic coconut oil or butter, melted (where to buy coconut oil)
- 2 tablespoons instant yeast
- ¼ cup organic pure honey
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 large egg
- 2½ cups white whole wheat flour (where to buy)
- 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine water, oil, yeast, and honey. Allow mixture to rest for 15 minutes.
- With a dough hook, mix in salt, eggs, and white whole wheat flour until combined. Add all-purpose flour ½ at a time.
- Shape dough into 12 balls and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Place rolls onto prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes or until rolls are golden brown.
Try my Homemade Whole Wheat Crusty Bread next!
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These look yummy, can you replace the white flour with anything?
Hi Debra! You could simply use all whole wheat flour (although you may want to decrease it by 1/2 cup for best results).
Now these LOOK delicious! I love bread! Thanks for sharing with us at the Teach Me Tuesday Linky Party:)
These look so amazingly soft and fluffly! Can’t wait to try the recipe.
these look so great! definitely have to try these – pinning! happy to have found your site from the no rules weekend party!
These look amazing! I’m always looking for healthy bread recipes that taste yummy too!
OK I have never tried whole wheat flour but I might buy it next time I need flour! Thanks for this delicious-looking recipe!
Oh you so should Bre! Whole wheat flour is the bomb and its much healthier than all-purpose flour.
You must use an egg wash to get that nice shine on your rolls. Also you obviously don’t bake them on a pan, do you roll them smaller and put them in a pie dish instead? How does that impact the baking time?
Hi Kathyrn! I actually brush a little bit of melted butter onto the tops of the rolls after they come out the oven to give them that shine. When I baked them in a pie dish, I didn’t decrease the size or the baking time—I just used two pie dishes. I usually bake them on a pan, though. Great questions!
My rolls did not turn out anything like yours. They look just like basic whole wheat bread not fluffy and they are brown and crispy on the bottom. In fact every time I try to make dinner rolls they turn out brown and crispy on the bottom. Can you please help?
Hey Beth! Thanks for the question. For the crispy bottoms, I would try raising the oven rack a little higher, and reducing the temperature just a bit. It seems like your oven gets a little hotter than usual. As for the fluffiness, I would use white whole wheat flour, and let them rise for a little longer before baking. I hope this helped!
I would like to use active dry yeast, how would I convert that?
This is a good conversion table. http://redstaryeast.com/yeast-baking-lessons/yeast-conversion-table/
I made these rolls tonight! They are fabulous and they came out looking like yours
i used spelt flour instead of white flour, i used a flaxseed egg to replace the egg, i used coconut milk in place of the water and used dry active yeast instead of instant. It took 45 minutes to rise in a warm oven and i let sit on the counter for 30 minutes before i baked them. Thank you for the recipe! This is now my go to.
Does is make a big difference if you use whole wheat flour instead of white whole wheat flour? i just tried making them and my dough was extremely dry and almost crumbly. I added a little bit more milk and it started sticking together but it still seems very dry.
35 years ago my mom had a friend who had a recipe similar to Honey Whole wheat dinner rolls. The friend called them Duvas Bunns. The recipe was lost. Always want my child to have foods that are healthy and delicious. Look forward to making them and see if I can get that delicious flavor back from long ago.