Cloverleaf rolls

Recently I became enamored with cloverleaf rolls.  The ones I had were soft, moist, at once pillowy yet dense, and more than twice the size of the muffin cups they'd been baked in.  So you see, I may have some unreasonable expectations when it comes to these things.

I really wanted to like this recipe.  I had the utmost faith in Joy of Cooking's methodology but the rolls I cooked up with its recipe came out more like hard biscuits than the pillowy creations I'd known before.  They didn't even fill the muffin cups of the pan when they came out of the oven.

Sad cloverleaf rolls.  At least the copious amount of nonstick spray worked as advertised.

This was my first time making yeast-leavened rolls; I've made biscuits in my time, but recipes for those can be summarized thus:

1. Mix.
2. Bake.
3. Consume.

I've also made pizza dough, but if I've been messing that one up, then those have been some tasty mistakes.

Looking back, perhaps it was a combination of errors that led to an unfortunate final product.  Let's see, shall we?

• It's probably best to make these on a day when it's cooler than 100°F outside; even with the air conditioning on, the rising times were altered and the 425° oven was not so pleasant.
• Punching down dough after the first rising is more important than I'd realized; we don't do this for pizza dough (and yet it's still darn tasty) and I haven't yet made many other breads.  Important!
• Just as it's important to let the dough rise, it's equally important to not let it rise for too long.  I suspect that this was the main culprit behind the hardtack biscuits that resulted.

So it's probably not the recipe itself that's to blame after all, but the ol' "user error".  We'll probably try this one again, but a lot of Interweb sleuthing has turned up four more promising recipes for cloverleaf rolls, all of which I intend to test.  Will I find a recipe that results in my vision of the ideal cloverleaf roll?  We shall see, shall we not?

Sad cloverleaf rolls are sad.

Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 610