Let’s imagine that you have a craving for pizza. (Wait, you really do? It’s like I read your mind; let’s be friends.) Okay, now that you’re thinking about how delicious pizza is—with all that chewy crust and savory sauce—you might start thinking that you maybe want some garlic bread, too. (Look, you’re in good company—there’s a reason so many pizza delivery places throw garlic bread twists in with your order.) So pizza craving, check. Garlic bread craving, check. And then you think, while we’re on the topic of carbs, let’s just go for the trifecta (YOLO), and you start imagining the first bite of a buttery, soft roll—warm from the oven. The kind that would be like a simple dinner roll meets a Parker House roll meets…an entire slab of butter.

Today’s recipe is one in a series of “how have I possibly not written about this yet” recipes. These are recipes that I personally love, make all the time, and swear by. They’re the ones that I tell other people to make if they ask me for, say,  a chocolate birthday cake—like the Brooklyn Blackout Cake we talked about earlier this week.

And before we dive into it all, let’s start with a question. Do you like cheese?

They do say a watched pot never boils, I know. But I still like to stand near the oven door in the winter, warming myself in the gentle heat it throws off. And unlike water boiling, lots of recipes require a little more TLC. A check-in, if you will. You have to glance at your bread now and again to see if it’s browning, or lightly touch the surface of your cakes to see if they spring back or not. As precise as baking is, baking times can often be treated as mere guidelines; instead, you learn the visual clues and signposts that indicate proper doneness.