I'll typically make a fairly simple template by 'hand' in my editor, then port it to Jekyll or WordPress or something else like that.

As far as writing + deploying a simple HTML site, it's been 2-3 months since I've done that, if only because no one I contract with or work with wants to spend the time or money on me hand-writing and pushing a site-- templating it and then generating the rest of the site is at least a little quicker than that, and still doesn't come with the burden of using a backend language.