Cheese Rolls Recipe

IMAGE Riell Santos

These soft, buttery, sweet cheese rolls are bound to be a crowd favorite! It takes some effort to make but it is worth your time. You'll see what we mean when you take a bite out of these! 

What Is A Cheese Roll? 

A cheese roll is a bread roll stuffed with melty cheese. The tops of these are also slathered with softened butter and sprinkled with sugar. These are commonly sold in local bakeries along with the pandesals, cheese ensaymadas, and taisan cupcakes and are popular with students and adults alike. 

The rolls are made with an enriched dough, meaning beyond the usual flour, water, yeast, and seasonings of sugar and salt, the dough for these cheese rolls also includes eggs and butter. These two ingredients make these cheese rolls extra delicious and rich when you finally taste a bun.

In fact, the dough is made extra delicious because instead of the usual water, fresh milk is used to make these into what are known as milk bread buns. That's why these rolls are super soft, tasty, and addictive! 

How To Serve Cheese Rolls

 

Doesn't that melted cheese make you want to make these at home?

Photo by Riell Santos

These are best served fresh from the oven so the bread is still super soft, the cheese melty, and the butter and sugar just short of melting into your mouth when you take a bite! However, these are also fantastic cooled down to room temperature so you don't scald your tongue your eagerness to taste one!

Warm one up in a toaster oven for 1 minute or in the microwave for 5 seconds on High, and you can easily recreate that fresh-from-the-oven feeling if you truly desire your bread that way. 

How To Make Cheese Rolls

Yeast is an important ingredient in these bread rolls since without its rise, these will result in flat disks. The active dry yeast in this recipe is activated in warm milk before it's added to the flour mixture along with the rest of the ingredients. 

The dough is kneaded in an electric stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. This kitchen appliance makes it easy to do since the dough is quite sticky, especially when the softened butter is added while it's mixing. (Of course, you can totally knead this dough by hand! It will just take longer to do.) 

 

The dough is quite sticky.

Photo by Riell Santos

 

This is what the dough looks like before it's allowed to proof or rise.

Photo by Riell Santos

 

This is what the dough looks like after it has been allowed to rise or proof in a warm area of your kitchen.

Photo by Riell Santos

Once kneaded, you'll have to let these proof for about an hour until it has doubled in size. You'll do it again once you have formed the dough into rolls with the cheese inside. These are brushed with milk to encourage a golden brown top. 

Soften some butter and spread the tops of each roll with butter and sprinkle with sugar. These are then ready to be eaten! 

Tips To Make Cheese Rolls

1 No butter? Use margarine! 

This may be the number one question many bakers (and cooks!) ask when a recipe lists butter as an ingredient, and the answer is simple: yes, you can use margarine instead of butter. The biggest difference between butter and margarine is what it's made from. Butter is made from fresh milk that has been churned to allow the butterfat to separate from the milk. The butterfat is butter. 

Margarine is made from solidified oil, usually a kind of vegetable oil, and it undergoes a process to make it solid at room temperature or even at higher temperatures that otherwise would melt butter. In fact, margarine is originally colorless and tasteless which is why margarine, with its added ingredients, may have a tendency to look more yellow than butter and even taste more buttery than butter. 

Despite these differences, the uses of butter and margarine are interchangeable, especially in baking. The difference may lie in taste and budget but whatever you choose, the substitute works. 

2 Mix cheeses! 

Melty cheese is what makes these soooo appetizing but don't be limited to using just the usual processed cheese to make these irresistible! Use mozzarella for that iconic cheese stretch, cheddar or flavored cream cheese to pump up the cheese flavor, or better yet, mix two (or three!) different kinds of cheese to really make these rolls extra cheesy to your heart's desires.

How To Store Cheese Rolls

Just like all bread, these are prone to mold so it's best to store these in an airtight container to not only prevent pests but also mold from developing on the bread. 

Watch: Cheese Rolls Recipe 

Cheese Rolls Recipe