How to Bake the Best Rolls, Breads and Biscuits

Cathy Drabkin, who operates a home bakery in Hays, Kansas, adapted this low-key dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Minnesotans Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. The recipe is for an all-white dough shaped into round boules but you can create specialty loaves by adding whole-grain flours, seeds or fruit and shaping the loaves differently.

Related: How One Ambitious Kansas Baker Turned Her Bread-Making Hobby Into a Home Business

At The Bake Shop and Cafe in Cleveland, Shawnda Moye offers the Cinny, a warm cinnamon roll-meets-biscuit that somehow becomes more divine when paired with a cup of hot chocolate or coffee.

Brioche is a classic French bread made with oodles of butter and egg. It's soft, rich and luxurious. This recipe comes from Heritage Baking (Chronicle, $29.95) by Ellen King, founder of Hewn bakery in Evanston, Illinois.

Pastry chef Emily Marks learned all the tricks to making popovers during her five years at The Bachelor Farmer in Minneapolis, which closed during the pandemic in 2020. Serve them with the restaurant's signature honey butter or swap chopped fresh herbs, black pepper, or shredded cheese for the honey.

Behold! We have found the holy grail of homemade bread. It's an appealingly soft, barely sweet, mostly whole wheat sandwich loaf.  And the recipe is flexible and fuss-free-no kneading required! The recipe comes from The New Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Minneapolis residents Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

Baker Cathy Drabkin in Hays, Kansas, says cheesy anything is always a top seller. These jumbo rolls, adapted from her Do-Anything Artisan Bread recipe, taste scrumptious alone or in an egg sandwich.

These rich rolls with easy-to-handle dough won Best Bread of Show twice for state fair entrant Denise Turnbull of Monmouth, Illinois.

Every bit as good as regular homemade garlic, but with the added flavor and color of fresh chives: Prepare to be addicted.

This focaccia, a variation of Cathy Drabkin's Artisan Bread, adds olive oil to tenderize the dough, yielding a soft pillow that's a blank canvas for toppings like rosemary, red onion and sea salt.

Everyone needs a good cornbread recipe in the back pocket. This one, from Karen Bell, chef and owner of Bavette La Boucherie in Milwaukee, is a keeper.

This warm and cheesy pull-apart bread takes just a few minutes to make. Keep the ingredients on hand, and you'll always have a quick accompaniment for a soup supper with family and friends.

This family recipe for buttery, tender rolls comes from Kenda Friend of Indianapolis. "I'm convinced my husband married me for access to these rolls," says Friend of her mother's recipe. "Mom is truly the queen of yeast rolls."

Thyme and rosemary flavor these rich, buttery dinner rolls. The recipe, from the cookbook Heritage Baking (Chronicle, $29.95) by Illinois bakeshop owner Ellen King, yields 18 rolls (they freeze well).

The recipe for these flaky biscuits comes from Honey & Rye Bakehouse in Minneapolis. Try them with Mushroom Gravy.

Choose the uber-rich chocolate loaf, or try the sun-dried tomato pesto variation (it tastes like pizza!). The recipes come from Ellen King of Hewn bakery in Evanston, Illinois.

In yeast breads such as these dinner rolls, buttermilk creates a soft, supple crumb, great sliceability and tangy aroma. Shake buttermilk vigorously; the good stuff can fall to the bottom of the carton.

Soft pretzels' chewy, brown exterior comes from being boiled in an alkaline solution—the 1/4 cup baking soda in the water isn't a typo!

Melted cheese oozes out of these tender, flaky scones flecked with chives and bacon bits. Cheryl Christiansen of McPherson won best in quick breads with this scone at the Kansas State Fair.

Related: Must-Try Recipes for Scones

Minnesota cookbook author and blogger Molly Yeh often twists her challahs into simple spirals. This recipe—adapted from her cookbook Molly on the Range —makes four small loaves, perfect for freezing or sharing. (Slightly stale challah also makes dreamy French toast.)

Related: Molly Yeh Chats About Her New Cookbook, Home Is Where the Eggs Are

Kansas City chef Howard Hanna doesn't over-complicate garlic bread. It's buttery, lightly herby and very addictive.

Orange zest, nutmeg and smoked paprika add layers of flavor to these tender biscuits.

"My recipes are like my children. I'd hate to single one out as a favorite," says Zoe Caywood, who worked for many years as a miller at War Eagle Mill just east of Rogers, Arkansas. These biscuits are from one of Zoe's cookbooks. The recipe blends wheat and all-purpose flours for a fuller flavor than in traditional biscuits.

Melding her husband's Norwegian roots with her own Jewish heritage, blogger Molly Yeh's soft, slightly chewy rolls are ideal for brunch or even as a sweet complement to a holiday dinner.

Minnesota blogger Molly Yeh fills each of the three strands of her challah with chopped green onion, sesame oil and red pepper flakes. The result is a braided loaf that quite literally weaves together both sides of her ancestry-Jewish and Chinese. The recipe comes from Molly's book Molly on the Range (Rodale, $32.50).

It's impossible to beat a burger served on a soft, pillowy brioche bun. This recipe (from Hewn bakery in Evanston, Illinois) makes a big batch, so you can keep a stash in the freezer for several meals.

Bits of sweet potato fleck these moist dinner rolls from Sandra Schifferle of Lansing, Kansas. She puts Kansas wheat to good use in this recipe. For a quick prep, microwave your sweet potato, then cool and mash the veggie for the rolls.

Cornmeal adds crunch, and basil adds flavor to these biscuits. They make a tasty accompaniment to any soup.

There is something rather miraculous about stirring together two ingredients (yes, two ingredients!) and getting delicious homemade biscuits.

For a pretty presentation, lightly dip the top of each dough ball into flour or brush with egg white. Top each with a sage leaf, brush with egg white, and place on prepared baking sheets.