We’d make this rich, incredibly tender bread a lot more often if we didn’t have to spend 20 minutes kneading in perfectly room-temperature butter. Instead of painstakingly adding softened butter to the dough while it is kneaded, we simply melted the butter and added it directly to the eggs. We dispensed with the stand mixer altogether and opted for an equally effective no-knead approach that lets time do most of the work. To build structure and ensure an even, fine crumb in the finished loaf, we divided the dough and shaped it into tight balls before placing them in the pans.