These bread rolls are baked all over the world and they have many names: they’re called buns, rolls, baps, kadetjes and bolletjes (little balls). And they are super versatile!
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This recipe for soft bread rolls will yield delicious yeasted buns, with a hint of sugar and a little bit of fat. With that, you get a soft roll, that will hold up in your lunch box, on the backseat of your car and during soccer (football) practice. And they’re delicious on the dinner table. A simple, neutral little roll may be all you need for the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend. Different than our crunchy rolls – you can find that recipe here.
For me, these buns mean an immediate return to my childhood. We ate these rolls quite a lot, but they truly stood out on our vacations. When I was younger, our vacations started at the break of dawn with a carefully packed car (my father should have invented Tetris) and a box filled with food, carefully assembled by my mother. Coffee, which always was piping hot and a little bit too strong, with only a little bit of milk, and a soft, white bread roll with butter and peanut butter. That combination – coffee and peanut butter – technically don’t really work together, but for me it’s vacation.
Many ways lead to Rome
I tested this recipe a lot to get to the taste of these soft bread rolls I know so well. I played with the sugar amount, used oil, butter or shortening and milk versus water. All of those combinations, in any ratio, works. But if you’re going for the bakery supermarket taste and smell, it turns out it is a little bit of sugar and shortening.
Mixing
Ideally, you use a stand mixer for this bread. Using a mixer means you save time and effort. I still believe that it is good to start with mixing and kneading by hand, but this isn’t really the recipe for that. If you have a good hang of mixing, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have machinery do the heavy lifting. Just make sure you knead by hand for the last few minutes: it ensures you feel when the dough is ready for the next step.
With that, let’s get baking.