Two 20-minute rests and a final 30-minute rise helps develop flavor without becoming a long weekend project.

Natural cane sugar adds a light molasses flavor, while butter gives richness, ensuring the buns are not bland.

Shaping the dough into six balls and six disks bakes up both dinner rolls and sandwich buns.

The problem with trying to make bread quickly is that you sacrifice flavor. A long, slow rise does magical things to dough, resulting in a bread that can be the star of a meal.

Then there are times when you just need some bread. Buns to hold your barbecue pork sandwich. Dinner rolls to sop up some spectacular gravy. In those cases, the bread is destined to be the supporting actor, no matter what. So it doesn’t matter that it’s not an artisan-inspired loaf with a fancy foreign name.

Bread snob that I am, there are times when all I need is something simple. Something that can be done quickly so I can move onto more important things.…