Easy Milk Bread Rolls with No Tangzhong

Milk bread rolls are the softest and fluffiest roll you will ever make. It’s also an easy recipe because you don’t need to make Tangzhong but it will be just as delicious! Make popular Ang-Butter and Salad Sandwich with these.

Every Holiday dinner always needs some bread rolls and so I adapted my Milk Bread for Bread Machine without Tangzhon recipe to make these sweet and pillowy soft milk bread rolls easily at home. These also work great with my Korean Potato Salad Sandwich so try that for your next day’s lunch.

How to best enjoy Milk Bread Rolls

Enjoy these rolls with some butter as dinner rolls or simply with some jam for breakfast! For lunch, make an egg salad sandwich with it. My neighbor Michelle (who is a great baker) has been making egg salad sandwiches for her kids weekly using my milk bread recipe – ever since I taught her how to make it at home a couple of years ago.. when we were all stuck at home and she started a wonderful baking group of neighbor moms teaching each other bread recipes via zoom.🥰

The other wonderful way to enjoy this fluffy and amazing milk bread is to fill it with Ang-Butter (앙버터)!! I believe this combination of a big slab of cold butter with Danpat 단팥 (sweet red bean paste or anko) in different breads originated from Japan but has become very popular in Korea now. During my recent visit to Korea, I saw them in almost every Korean bakery – made with baguettes, sweet rolls, salted buns and even inside Hodu Kwaja (Walnut Pastry).

Watch my video and at the end, I show you how you can make Ang-Butter sandwich!

Ingredients for Milk Bread Rolls

Wet Ingredients

• 3/4 cup 2% low-fat milk (whole milk is OK too)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 large egg
• 60 g unsalted butter (at room temp)
• 1 tsp sea salt

Dry Ingredients

• 365 g unbleached bread flour 365g = 2 3/4 cups
• 50 g sugar 50g = 3.5 Tbsp
• 2 Tbsp milk powder for bread
• 2 Tbsp potato starch
• 1 packet instant yeast = 7g

For coating bowls and bread pan

• 1 Tbsp unsalted butter

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350℉.
2. Bring egg and butter to room temperature. Use the microwave to soften the butter if needed.
3. Warm milk + water (to bath water temperature) – I microwave for 40 sec.
4. In the stand mixer bowl – add wet ingredients – warm milk, water, butter, egg and then salt.
5. To the mixer bowl wet ingredients, add flour, sugar, milk powder and potato starch. Then make a little divot and add yeast to it. This is NOT absolutely necessary if you are using Instant Yeast but just so you make it a perfect environment, I recommend adding yeast on top of the dry ingredients and letting the salt stay in the bottom so the salt doesn’t touch the yeast directly.
6. Using the dough hook, start the stand mixer on low speed for 1-2 min until the dry ingredients are all mixed in. If using a bread machine, use the basic dough function to mix the dough.
7. Increase the mixer speed to medium-high (8 out of 10) and continue to knead for 12 min until it’s one dough ball. When the dough is ready, there should be very little stuff left on the sides of the bowl. See video.
8. While the dough is mixing, coat the inside of a bowl with butter. Also, coat the cake or pie pan with butter.
9. Once the dough is done, remove it and form it lightly into a ball. Then put the dough ball in the buttered bowl. Cover with a plastic wrap or towel and let it sit in a warm location 40 to 60 min or 100℉ oven for 40 min until the dough doubles in size.
10. Once the dough has risen, transfer the dough onto a floured smooth surface (granite/marble or wooden cutting board works well). Divide dough into 2 equal parts then divides each 1/2 into 4 to 5 equal size pieces to make a total of 10 balls. If you want to make it exact, I weighed my dough ball and it weighed 780 which means each dough ball should weigh around 78g to make 10 milk bread rolls. UPDATE 12/24/2023 – For smaller dinner roll size, the 78g size bread rolls were too big. I divided it into 48 – 49g size and made 16 balls and that was a perfect size.
11. Roll and shape each dough ball into a round ball. There are different ways to do this. One way is to use a circular motion with the palm of your hand and gently roll the dough on a floured surface until you get a smooth ball shape. What I like to do is to stretch the top and tuck it under and close it with your hands like closing up a dumpling so it’s smooth on top. Watch my video to see how I do it.
12. Place the dough balls on a buttered cake pan or pie pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for 30 min in a warm location again or in a proving oven.
13. When the dough balls have risen, lightly brush the top with milk or egg wash.
14. Bake in 350℉ oven for 20 min. Adjust time depending on the size of your rolls and if you made 16 balls like I mentioned above, reduce cooking time to by 3-4 min.
15. Remove from oven and let it cool for 15 min or longer and enjoy. Note, the bread may be too soft and get squished if you try to handle it when it’s still too hot.

Here’s a close-up picture of how soft, fluffy and pillowy, these amazing milk bread rolls are –

Milk Bread Rolls Recipe FAQ

Quick HOW TO make Milk Bread Dinner Rolls VIDEo (4 Min)

Fully Narrated Video (8 min)

Easy Milk Bread Dinner Rolls is the BEST for dinner parties + Korean bakery sandwiches! No Tangzhong