Recreating Hartz Chicken yeast rolls

I have obsessed over the yeast rolls that I ate as a kid at Ryan's Buffet and Hartz Chicken for years, having never had a roll quite like them outside of Texas. They were sweet, soft, super fluffy, and I always ate too many in a single sitting. Sadly, Ryan's buffet is shut down over the pandemic and Hartz Chicken only has stores around Houston, so my obsession with finding ways to eat these rolls again only grew over time.

To convince myself it wasn't just nostalgia, I went to a Hartz Chicken in Houston about a year ago and bought a half dozen rolls. It 100% lived up to my memory, helped along by the fact that they were fresh out of the oven.



The inside of a Hartz Chicken yeast roll

This past Christmas I decided I would attempt a copy cat recipe. I wandered through the internet and found plenty of posts asking for copy cat recipes of Hartz Chicken or Ryan's rolls, but no actual convincing recipe. I knew to get a roll that light and fluffy the dough had to have a relatively high hydration (weight of liquid divided by weight of flour). However, most of the yeast roll recipes I found online had a hydration of anywhere from just 30% to 60%, which seemed like it would result in a denser roll than I was looking for.

I finally found this random post on smokingmeatforums.com where a kind soul named Jim has been making these yeast rolls for decades and posted the recipe he has been using. The dough had a hydration of 100%, which was more believable than the other recipes I had found. I decided to try it with a couple minor tweaks: I used a stand mixer (Jim made these by hand?!) and brushed the tops with honey butter instead of unsalted butter.

The resulting roll was pretty close, except it was denser, not as sweet, and the top was stickier than I remembered. I tweaked the recipe by 1.5x'ing the sugar and made them again, but although the taste was closer, the roll was still too dense for my liking.



One late afternoon I happened to drive near a Hartz Chicken so a stop was made for some rolls (for research, of course). This particular roll did not live up to my memory as it was disappointingly stale, but it did manage to teach me several things I was doing wrong:

• The tops are brushed with salted butter, not honey butter. I determined this by scientifically licking the top of the roll (and by realizing my hands weren't sticky from eating them).
• The rolls need to rise in the muffin tin until more than doubled. I could tell because these rolls had tears on the side where they were clearly touching each other while in the tin, whereas mine were much smaller by comparison.
• They tasted strongly of honey, which led me to think I needed honey in addition to sugar.



Research rolls from Hartz Chicken

For the third attempt, I added honey (and more flour to offset the additional liquid) to the dough, let the rolls rise for much longer in the tin, and brushed the tops with salted butter. Since this was happening during Christmas Eve feast preparations, the rolls had to wait for the oven longer than they should have, so they were hilariously overproofed. But it turned out patience (and honey) was what I was missing from my previous attempts, because these rolls were so much lighter and tasted exactly the same, if not better.



Third time's the charm

I made them one more time successfully with a more reasonable proofing time in the muffin tin, and decided to call the recipe done. If you'd like to try it yourself, you can find the recipe here!