NEW ROCHESTER —Holiday traditions vary from family to family, but Kathy Frederick has a great one that
has remained popular with her family for more than 50 years.
Her Holiday Yeast Rolls are just easy to make and delicious to eat now as they were when she was a bride
with a young family. She will use the same recipe for the rolls this Easter that she did that first
spring holiday.
“I’ve been making these rolls for 50 years. A friend made these rolls every day and she shared the recipe
with me,” Frederick said. “I love bread, anyways, and these are just so good. I always liked bread and I
still do.”
She said she makes these every year for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas; however, the Easter season
holds a place in her heart.
Frederick recalled a former tradition where she and the family always packed a basket of Easter food,
mostly homemade, to take to church on the morning before Easter to be blessed. Though some churches
still maintain that practice, her church does not observe it.
“I do love to have our bread blessed,” Frederick said.
She also bakes cookies and brown onion skin eggs for the holiday and purchases a butter lamb as part of
the Easter traditions. The butter lamb is bought and is simply standard butter shaped to resemble a lamb
and Frederick said “tastes wonderful on the rolls.”
She added, “It’s very traditional and ethnic.”
Her recipe makes 32 rolls which she bakes in four separate baking dishes with eight rolls in each dish.

One of the highlights for her is this is something that can be made in advance, to save time for other
things to make on the actual holiday.
“I often make them a week or more ahead and all we have to do is take them out of the freezer and pop
them in the oven and they are ready to eat,” Frederick said.
Because it is an old recipe, it calls for the cook to knead the dough. That may seem to be old fashioned
as many kitchen appliances have mixers or other tools which can knead the dough for the cook, but
Frederick doesn’t mind.
“I still prefer and enjoy to knead the dough by hand, ” she said. “It’s fun doing it by hand. It doesn’t
take that long.”
Beyond just the tradition of baking the rolls, Frederick said that there is also a tradition among the
young men of the family including her two sons when they were young.
She and husband Joe have been married 51 years.
When the young sons would go for the rolls, they would fight for the middle roll in the eight-roll baking
dish. Now the two young grandsons have the same quest to get the middle roll.
No matter which roll is taken first, at almost every holiday, leftovers are not a problem as all the
rolls seem to find their way into satisfied stomachs.
Frederick, now retired after a career in special education, first with the Wood County Educational
Service Center and later with Washington Local Schools, keeps busy with volunteer work and other service
to her church, St. John XXIII in Perrysburg.