There's a restaurant in Chelsea, MI called The Common Grill, anyway they have the best dinner rolls I've ever tasted. They're chewey and have a relativly thin crust and are topped with poppy seeds and kosher salt as well as a herbed olive oil. I've been attempting to duplicate them for the past year or so, and I'm getting pretty close.

Last time I went there for dinner I interrogated a prep-cook prepping the rolls, and I noticed they were using a frozen dough prepared off-site which I would imagine is not uncommon for a restaurant. I asked her what kind of dough and she didn't know, but she did say they used a garlic/basil olive oil and brushed only before baking then baked with poppy & salt.

My current iteration is a 68% hydration pizza dough, brush with herb olive oil and poppy seeds + kosher salt before baking. My main problem is a pleasant crust texture. What i'm going for is a thin crust and a very moist chewy inside but not raw.

The last time I baked them I shaped them on a sheet pan and baked at 450F till done, I ended up taking them out too soon (I had read in a Reinhart book that rolls should be 190F in the center) and they weren't done, so i had to re-put them back in to finish baking which ended up kind of over-doing them.

So my question is does anyone else make rolls from their dough? I notice one pizza dough doesn't really go that far -- only about 6 rolls. And if so, what temperature is a good temp for rolls? I think the geometry doesn't work well with a pizza hot oven so I've gotta go lower, but I"m not real sure how low to go.