Thanks for the replies. Looks like I'm safe setting the throttle to produce gradual acceleration and then tapping the brakes to slow down as required, if that's the way Boeing says to do it. I was worried about wear on the brakes or heating them up too much, but apparently that's not an issue.
I've not tried differential braking much because I figure it isn't used often in real life on large aircraft, and replies here seem to confirm that. It doesn't appear to have much effect in the sim unless I press one brake considerably harder than the other (in a small Baron, the aircraft will swing to one side with even the slightest differential pressure). I'll have to try the alternating technique and see how that works.
I suspect the throttle quadrant I have for my sim is a bit stiffer than the real throttle levers, and the range in which the throttles must be adjusted to go from slowing down to speeding up seems to be very small. Perhaps it's easier to make such small adjustments with the real throttles.
I haven't tried differential thrust at all (it's too hard to move the throttle levers separately in the sim), so I'm glad to hear that it isn't frequently used, as I was wondering about that as well.
Of the several aircraft I fly in the sim (737-800, 747-400, and 767-300ER), only the 767 seems to want to roll spontaneously at idle. The other two will eventually coast to a very gradual stop at idle thrust, depending on the weight of the aircraft and other stuff, of course. I'll have to try them all empty sometime to see what that does.