Quick Two-ingredient Dinner Rolls, for when you really, really want a little fresh, warm bread

These simple two-ingredient rolls are ready to eat, warm from the oven, in about 30 minutes. Recipe below.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST REALLY, REALLY WANT a little fresh, warm bread. This is a recipe for exactly that. It is the most low-commitment bread recipe I know.

The other night, I was lying in bed doing that thing we are not supposed to do when we wake at 3AM—staring idly at my phone—when social media served me a brief video for bread using only! two! ingredients! Well, bread rolls, but this was enough to wake me up thoroughly, so much so that I sent myself the link in an email (since otherwise I would not recall any of this). Two-ingredient bread! OK!

In the morning, after I read that email, I went to the kitchen and, well, made four bread rolls. Start to finish, it took just a little more than half an hour, including the 25-ish minutes while the rolls were baking. Golly!

The two ingredients are self-rising flour and Greek yogurt. If you don’t have self-rising flour, add a little baking powder and salt, and make four-ingredient rolls. We’ll tell you how in the Kitchen Notes.

These rolls are perfect when unexpected company turns up, hoping to be fed—the rolls will help stretch a smaller dinner or provide a nice little snack. Or maybe you just have a hankering for a little warm bread. And because the recipe only makes four rolls, you won’t be staring down a dozen rolls or more.

Here are the caveats: Because the rise depends on baking powder, it doesn’t have quite the same yeasty taste we all love. And since this is not a yeast bread, it’s not going to keep very well. That’s why you just make four rolls, not four dozen. Eat them the same day, ideally very soon after you take them out of the oven.

Here are the plusses: it’s fast! It’s full of protein from the yogurt. You can make it with all white flour, or a mix of white and other flours—I’ve used a mix of white and rye flours, and some bloggers seem to like this with all whole wheat. And it is a delightful treat. Even if you’re baking it for a solo meal, you will be pleasantly surprised at what you gave yourself: fresh warm bread with little effort.

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Two-ingredient Dinner Rolls

These simple two-ingredient rolls are ready to eat, warm from the oven, in about 30 minutes.

Course Bread

Servings 4 rolls

Ingredients

• 1 cup or so of self-rising white flour (see Kitchen Notes for substitutions and variations)
• 1/2 cup plain whole milk Greek yogurt (see Kitchen Notes)

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
• Line a small baking sheet with a silicone baking mat.
• Put about 3/4 cup of the flour in a medium mixing bowl, then add the yogurt. Mix together using a wooden spoon until things start to come together, and then use your hands to mix. Your goal is a uniform, slightly sticky dough. Add in more flour as needed you mix things together to reach your slightly sticky goal. Sometimes when I make this, at the very end I'm tweaking with dashes of yogurt and flour. Don't overthink it! I've used a lot of words here, but this part will take you maybe two or three minutes.
• Form the dough into a ball, then cut into four equal pieces. Roll each into a round, slightly flatten each, and place on the lined baking sheet, spacing 2 or 3 inches apart.
• Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until the rolls are lightly golden.
• That's it! Let them cool for just a few minutes, then serve.

Kitchen Notes

No self-rising flour? If you don't have or don't want to invest in self-rising flour, you can make it yourself. To a cup of regular flour, add 1-1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt and stir together with a fork. That's it.

The yogurt. We use plain whole milk Greek yogurt, but regular yogurt would be fine too as long as it's plain and whole milk.

Getting the flour/yogurt mix right. There will be a bit of variation in the volumes of flour and yogurt you need, depending on the moisture content of the flour (which dries out a bit over time) and the yogurt—Greek style needs a bit more flour than does American style.

Some variations. Modest variations, such as substituting all whole wheat flour, work out nicely, as does a mix of white and rye flours. Adding a teaspoon of sugar to the dough and then topping it with a bit of fancy sugar or a chunk of chocolate could be nice. But we would not advocate for fancier experiments. We tried a quick emergency-basis gotta have a cinnamon roll with this and, to sum up, meh.

Liz’s Crockery Corner. This small piece of flow blue is a relish dish in the Greville pattern from Till & Sons of Burslem. I believe we found it in a little mall somewhere in Indiana, during one of our mid-pandemic wanderings. There's not a lot of information out there about this pattern—based on the mark, it looks like it was made some time between 1891 and the early 1920s. While the design has a slightly crude look in spots, reminiscent of pre-1850 finishes, I'm inclined to date it to the early 20th century. First, because when you find larger pieces of Greville, such as tureens, they are usually edged with gold. And second, because of its own hey, let's throw this in too! elements—the fussy flower bouquet-and-swag motif and the added bit of lacy raised embossing in the china itself. This plate packs a lot into a little package, all very much in keeping with the extra nature of turn-of-the-century American mass market taste.