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Why categorise? If it's hilly for you, that's one of your hilly rides.
Hills aside there's enough information in your post to conclude that yes your regular 30-45 minute ride is making you fitter.
Don't overthink it.
Exactly. I live in a fairly flat area but even that can mean 100ft climbing per mile on some of my gravel loops and I would count them as small rolling hills (bit of flat, bit of up, bit of down and repeat) and it makes the ride quite an effort compared to when I take the flatest route I can.
50 m climbing per km along as a very minimum for a hilly ride Ie average gradient 1:10
I had a thread on this quite a while back. Consensus was 1000ft per 10 miles, has worked for me as a good benchmark.
I'm usually around the 600ft per 10 miles mark where I live, have to find extra hilly bits to get near the benchmark
Live in Essex which isn’t renowned for its hills or mountain biking but surprised by how big the scene is. For local mid week rides I generally will do either 1) a longer xc ride/road/footpath ride that can clock up over 20miles but only 1000ft climbed (steady leg spin) 2) a trail ride taking into account as much downhill heading trail to clock up 15miles and more like 1500ft climbed (more of attacking every be of the ride with only a few stops).
Come the weekend Over Surrey I will try and get 20mile and over 3000ft climbed but have been known to get 15miles with 3500ft climbs (all with slow pedal ups and attack the descents).
My point there’s no definite answer but would say use 10mile/1000ft as a guild because it depends on how you ride thoughs miles.