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Hawaiian Sweet Rolls

Pillow-soft, golden, lightly sweet rolls in the style of the Hawaiian sweet bread that Portuguese settlers brought to Hawaii: an enriched dough of eggs, butter, brown sugar and pineapple juice, baked together in one tin and pulled apart. Perfect for ham sliders. Variations, a bread machine note and a short history below.

  • Serves 16
  • Makes 16
  • Hands-on 30 min
  • Rise 2½–3 hrs
  • Bake 20–25 min
  • Freeze for up to 1 month
  • American (Hawaii)

Tips for perfect rolls ↓ · Variations ↓ · Bread machine ↓

From Portuguese sweet bread to King’s Hawaiian: a little history ↓

Method

  1. Weigh the two flours into a large bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer). Stir in the 10 g of fast-action dried yeast on one side and the 70 g of brown sugar and 7 g of salt on the other.

  2. Warm the 140 ml of pineapple juice until just lukewarm (about 30°C / 86°F), then whisk in the 2 eggs, the egg yolk and the vanilla. Pour into the flour and mix to a very soft, sticky dough.

  3. Knead for 5 minutes, then work in the soft butter a little at a time. Keep kneading for 8–10 minutes more by hand (a dough scraper helps), or 6–8 minutes with a dough hook on medium-low, until the dough is smooth, glossy and stretchy and passes the windowpane test. It stays soft and tacky: oil your hands rather than adding flour.

  4. Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave in a warm place for 1½ to 2 hours, until doubled. Sweet doughs rise slowly, because the sugar holds on to the water the yeast needs, so give it time.

  5. Grease a 23 × 33 cm (9 × 13 in) baking tin. Tip the dough onto a lightly oiled worktop and divide it into 16 equal pieces of about 50 g (1¾ oz).

  6. Shape each piece into a smooth, tight ball with oiled hands, rolling it under a cupped hand, and set them in the tin in 4 rows of 4.

  7. Cover and prove for about 1 hour, until very puffy and pressed together. Meanwhile heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan), gas mark 4, 350°F, with a shelf in the middle.

  8. Brush the tops gently with the egg-white glaze for a satiny finish. Bake for 20–25 minutes, covering loosely with foil after 12–15 minutes: the sugar and juice make them brown quickly. They are done when the middle roll reads 88–90°C (190–195°F).

  9. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Serve warm, or cool completely and wrap well to keep them soft.

Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.

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Tips for perfect rolls

  1. Weigh, don’t scoop. King Arthur Baking counts a cup of all-purpose flour as 120 g, but a cup scooped straight from the bag holds noticeably more, so the grams are the real recipe. Use digital scales for flour, yeast, salt and liquids (1 ml of water or milk weighs about 1 g). The US cup amounts in the US view are a guide.
  2. American flour, British flour. American all-purpose flour sits between British plain flour and strong bread flour in protein, so we mix the two. Bread flour (strong flour) is right for bagels, which need a strong, chewy dough.
  3. Yeast. Fast-action dried yeast is the same thing as American instant yeast: stir it straight into the flour. One 7 g sachet equals one US ¼ oz packet (2¼ tsp). With active dry yeast, dissolve it in the lukewarm liquid first; with fresh yeast, use about 17–20 g, crumbled into the liquid.
  4. Lukewarm, never hot. Liquid at about 30°C (86°F) feels just warm on your wrist. Hot liquid kills yeast; a cool dough simply takes longer.
  5. Knead until it passes the windowpane test. Stretch a small piece of kneaded dough gently between your fingers. If it thins to a translucent sheet without tearing, the gluten is ready; if it tears, knead for 2 minutes more and test again.
  6. Sweet doughs are slow. Sugar, butter and eggs slow the yeast, so soft dinner rolls and Hawaiian rolls take longer to rise than plain bread. Judge each rise by the look and feel of the dough, not the clock: a floured fingertip dent should fill back slowly.
  7. Pack them close for soft sides. Rolls baked touching in one tin steam each other and stay soft and pale where they join; rolls baked apart get a crust all round.
  8. Is it done?. Soft, enriched rolls are done at 88–90°C (190–195°F) in the centre of the middle roll; King Arthur Baking found they dry out if taken further. Bagels are judged by a deep golden-brown colour.

Variations

4 ways to change the main recipe. Each uses the same method unless it says otherwise.

Slider rolls (for ham and cheese sliders)

Divide into 24 pieces of about 35 g (1¼ oz) and bake in the same tin, 6 rows of 4, for 18–20 minutes. Split the whole slab horizontally while warm and fill it in one go.

Hawaiian burger buns

Divide into 8 pieces of about 100 g (3½ oz), shape into balls and flatten each to 9 cm (3½ in) on a lined tray, 5 cm (2 in) apart. Prove until puffy, glaze and bake for 18–22 minutes.

Without pineapple juice

Use 140 ml (½ cup plus 1 tbsp) lukewarm milk instead of the juice and replace 20 g of the brown sugar with 1 tbsp honey. The rolls are a little paler and milkier, closer to Portuguese sweet bread.

Make it in a bread machine (dough cycle)

Put everything in the pan in the order your manual gives: Panasonic machines want the yeast first, then the flour and other dry ingredients, with the liquid last; most other makes want the liquid first and the yeast last, on top of the flour. The pineapple juice, eggs, yolk and vanilla are the liquid; add the butter, soft and in pieces, with the flour. Choose the Dough programme (or Sweet Dough) and start it straight away: never use the delay timer with eggs. The dough stays soft and sticky; do not add more than 1–2 tbsp flour. If it has not doubled when the programme ends, leave it in the machine for another 30–60 minutes, as King Arthur Baking advises. The full recipe suits a large (2 lb, 900 g–1 kg loaf) machine; for a 1.5 lb machine make three-quarters, and for a compact 1 lb machine (about 250 g flour, such as the Panasonic SD-PN100) make half. Then shape, prove and bake as above.

Bread machines: the dough cycle for rolls → · Kneading and proving techniques →

See also

Chef’s notes

  • American all-purpose flour has a little more protein than British plain flour, so we use half strong white bread flour and half plain flour to match it. In the US, use 400 g (3⅓ cups) of all-purpose flour instead of the two.
  • Use pineapple juice from a carton or can, which has been pasteurised. Fresh juice contains bromelain, an enzyme that breaks down gluten; King Arthur Baking says to heat fresh juice to 93°C (200°F), about 2 minutes in the microwave, and cool it before use.
  • The pineapple flavour is faint: the juice adds sweetness, a little acidity and a golden colour. King’s Hawaiian, the best-known brand, does not list pineapple juice, but many home recipes (King Arthur Baking among them) use it.
  • They keep, well wrapped, for 3 days and freeze for up to 1 month. Warm through, wrapped in foil, for 10 minutes at 160°C (140°C fan), gas mark 3, 325°F.

A little history

Hawaiian sweet rolls began as Portuguese sweet bread. Portuguese workers, mainly from the Azores and Madeira, first came to Hawaii in 1878 to work on the sugar plantations, and they built stone ovens (fornos) to bake their bread; the Kona Historical Society still bakes Portuguese sweet bread in one every week.

The Azorean massa sovada (“kneaded dough”) is a round, sweet festive loaf enriched with butter, eggs, milk and sugar, traditionally baked for Easter and the Feast of the Holy Spirit. In Hawaii the loaves were nicknamed “stone bread”, because they turned hard within a day.

In 1950 Robert Taira, the Hawaii-born son of Japanese immigrants, opened Robert’s Bakery in Hilo on the Big Island and found a way to make a softer sweet bread that stayed fresh far longer. In 1963 the bakery moved to King Street in Honolulu as King’s Bakery; a bakery in Torrance, California followed in 1977, and in 1983 the company first sold its sweet bread as a 12-pack of dinner rolls, the “Hawaiian rolls” now sold across the United States.

Sources for these notes

For the history above and the tips for perfect rolls.

How this recipe was developed

Home recipes for Hawaiian sweet rolls copy the soft, sweet, golden shop rolls. We followed the tested recipes below in our own words.

  • Pineapple juice, brown sugar, eggs. King Arthur Baking uses canned pineapple juice, packed brown sugar, butter, 2 eggs and a yolk, and vanilla. Our dough uses the same ingredients in similar proportions, scaled to 400 g of flour.
  • A sticky dough and slow rises. King Arthur warns that the dough is very wet and that sweet dough rises slowly; we use 10 g of yeast and oiled hands rather than extra flour.
  • Gentle bake to 190°F. King Arthur bakes at 350°F (180°C) until the rolls read 190°F (88°C); Diana’s rolls on Allrecipes bake at 350°F too. We cover them with foil part way, as the sugar browns fast.

Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):

This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.

Useful kit

  • Digital kitchen scales: weighs flour, liquids, yeast and salt to the gram, and lets you divide the dough into even rolls. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Rectangular baking tin, 23 × 33 cm (9 × 13 in): the standard tin for a tray of 16 pull-apart rolls. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Instant-read thermometer: the sure way to tell when soft rolls are done. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Plastic dough scraper: for sticky doughs, dividing and keeping the worktop clean. Amazon UK · Amazon US
  • Spider skimmer: lifts bagels out of the boiling water without tearing them. Amazon UK · Amazon US

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