Side dishes · Breads & rolls

Soft dinner rolls

Name: Soft dinner rolls
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients: 4 cups bread flour; 1 1/4 cups whole milk, warm; 1 packet active dry yeast; 3 tbsp granulated sugar; 5 tbsp butter, softened, plus more for brushing; 1 egg; 1 1/2 tsp salt

The pull-apart rolls that make a holiday table: enriched yeasted dough baked side by side, brushed with butter. Two rises and everyone forgives you for the wait.

Time: 50 min (30 prep + 20 cook)
Servings: 12
Per serving: 223 kcal
Protein: 7 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

4 cups bread flour480 g
1 1/4 cups whole milk, warm300 g
1 packet active dry yeast7 g
3 tbsp granulated sugar40 g
5 tbsp butter, softened, plus more for brushing70 g
1 egg50 g
1 1/2 tsp salt8 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Foam the yeast in the warm milk with a pinch of the sugar. If it doesn't foam in 5 minutes, the yeast is dead — better to know now.
Mix and knead everything 8–10 minutes into a soft, slightly sticky dough. First rise until doubled, about an hour.
Divide into 12, roll tight balls, and pack them into a buttered dish so the sides touch — that's what makes them pull-apart soft.
Second rise 40 minutes, then bake at 190°C for 18–20 minutes. Brush with butter the second they come out.

Why this score

easy to overeat

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

13% of kcal

35% water

5 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

13%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2675 kcal goes into the pot, 955 g of ingredients comes out as ~900 g of food → 297 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 297
Protein: (13%); 10 g
Fat: (27%); 9 g
Carbohydrates: (60%); 45 g
of which sugar: 6 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 417 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More side dishes

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.