Morning buns

Apparently these are a new fad that started slowly but is quickly gaining momentum. They were created at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco in the 1970s; I first had one many years ago, but it's been only recently that I've started seeing them more frequently in coffee shops. (I don't think I've ever seen one in a bakery.) I'm not a fan of the super sweet, heavily laden breakfast pastries that are the usual fare in American bakeries, so I was immediately addicted to these lightly sweet, flaky, buttery rolls. (I'd call them a roll, not a bun. After all, they are rolled!) That said, while every one I've had has been very flaky, similar to a croissant, I just found another recipe from Bon Appétit that is made with enriched bread dough, which to me seems more like a cinnamon roll.

I didn't change much in this recipe. I switched out cardamom for the cinnamon (the scent of the cardamom with the orange was otherworldly), water for the orange juice (and used it for proofing the yeast), used less orange peel, and a mix of salted and unsalted butter (adjusting the added salt accordingly.)  I also modified the rising technique as recommended in one of the comments.  Here's what I used:

For the Dough:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon + 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
2¼ teaspoons instant (rapid-rise yeast)
¼ cup orange juice water, very warm
3/8 teaspoon salt
1½ cups butter (half unsalted) cut into ¼-inch-thick slices and chilled
1 cup sour cream, chilled
3 tablespoons ice water
1 egg yolk

For the Filling:
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon grated zest of one small orange
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon cardamom, freshly ground
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Proof the yeast in the warm water with 1 teaspoon of sugar.  Combine the flour, 2 teaspoons sugar, and salt in a large zipper-lock bag. Add the butter, seal and shake to evenly coat the butter. Press the air out of the bag and reseal. Roll over the bag several times with a rolling pin, shaking the bag after each roll, until the butter is pressed into large flakes. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and stir in the yeast mixture, sour cream, ice water, and egg yolk until combined.  Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead briefly to form a smooth, cohesive ball. Roll the dough into a 20x12-inch rectangle. Starting at the short end, roll the dough into a tight cylinder. Pat the cylinder flat into a 12x4-inch rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze for 15 minutes.

Line a 12-cup muffin tin with liners and grease with non-stick cooking spray.  In a medium bowl, stir together the sugars, orange zest, cardamom, and vanilla.  Remove the dough from the freezer and place on a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into a 20x12-inch rectangle and sprinkle evenly with the filling, using more towards one long (outside) edge and less on the other long (inside) edge.  Leave a ½-inch border at the long ends. Lightly press the filling into the dough. Starting at the long end with less filling, roll the dough into a tight cylinder and pinch lightly to seal the seam. Cut the cylinder into 12 equal pieces and transfer cut-side-up to the prepared muffin tin. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or up to 24 hours.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and place loaf or cake pan on bottom of oven. Remove plastic from rolls and place in oven. Pour 3 cups boiling water into pan in oven, close oven door, and let buns rise until puffed and doubled in size, 20 to 30 minutes*.  

Remove the rolls from the oven and heat the oven to 425 degrees F. Bake for 5 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees F.  Bake until the rolls are deep golden brown, **40 to 50 additional minutes. 

Allow the rolls to cool in the muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and remove the liners. The rolls are best served warm, but can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.

Make Ahead: After placing the buns in the muffin tin, place the tin in the freezer until the buns are firm, about 30 minutes. Transfer the buns (with the liners) to a zipper-lock bag and freeze for up to 1 month. To finish, return the buns to a muffin tin and refrigerate for at least 8 hours or up to 24 hours, then proceed with rising in the oven as directed.


I had some problems with this recipe.  The first was with the rising.  According to the comments, this recipe is from Cook's Country (subscription required), although the blogger did not credit them.  (She claims she did, but I still don't see it.)  They modified the rising technique so that, instead of placing the rolls in a warm oven (which apparently caused some butter leakage), they put them in a cold oven with a pan of hot water.  My oven has a constant pilot light and so is always a little warm (no more than 100F), but I also used the pan of hot water.  *After 30 minutes, the rolls had hardly puffed at all, which didn't surprise me.  (It might be my yeast, which has been in the freezer for several years.  While it proofs fine in warm water, dough seems to rise more slowly than expected.  It really seems to need the heat.)  I let the rolls rise until they looked puffed and actually doubled, which was an hour and 45 minutes.  (On the other hand, in this demonstration by Claire Saffitz for Bon Appétit, the rolls have risen only about 1 cm after 30 minutes--not much different from mine.  She tests their readiness by the dent test.  I tried that at 30 minutes and the dough sprang right back, but I wasn't sure if it wasn't just sticking to my finger.  Besides, her dough was an entirely different consistency.)  By that time, there was a substantial amount of leakage of the sugar water.

Which brings me to problem #2:  the liners.  I had been counting on using my silicon muffin liners, but despite digging through every box I thought might have kitchen items, I couldn't find them.  The blogger warns that these rolls WILL stick, so I had concerns.  I greased the tins, lined the bottoms with a circle of greased parchment, then wrapped a strip of greased parchment around the side of the rolls and crossed my fingers.  It worked fine--- no sticking.

Since my oven's only heating element is at the bottom, I end up with burned bottoms with items that have a high butter content, so I try to use an air-bake pan in those cases.  To address that here, I put the muffin tin on an air-bake sheet pan (which also helped to catch some of the leakage.)

One problem I did not have was a wet dough, as some people did.  My dough was beautiful--soft and easy to work with.  I can only assume either they put in too much liquid, or, most likely, their butter softened while they were working with it. 

At 40 minutes, the rolls looked done, but I wanted them more caramelized and crispy, so I left them another 5 minutes.  I sort of think that, since butter browns so easily, anything with a high butter content probably needs to get pretty dark before it's actually fully baked.  (I was also concerned about what effect the liquid leakage and the air-bake pan would have on the bottoms, whether they'd be soggy.  Better over baked than under.)  But when I started taking them out of the pan, they seemed too pale and soft on the undersides.  So I put them back in the oven, without the air-bake pan, and baked for another 10 minutes.  I checked the undersides again, and they still seemed too pale and soft.  Back in for another 10 minutes.  **In all, I baked them for about an hour and a half, minus the five minutes or so that they were out of the oven while I was fussing with them.  They turned out perfectly:  crispy and flaky on the outside, very soft and airy on the inside.  (The tips and edges were just starting to get too brown.)  There was a little caramelized sugar at the bottom of each tin that would have cemented the rolls to the tin if I'd let them cool very long in it, but I took them out hot and cooled them on a rack upside down.  (And peeled the paper off before it hardened on as well.)  I'm not even sure it's necessary to do anything more than grease the tins, as long as you remove the rolls soon enough.

Conclusion:  These were absolutely delicious.  They are a bit fussy when you don't know what to look for or expect, but I think once you know that you can whip these up pretty easily.  The reduced amount of orange was still plenty for me--- just a hint.  My only issue is that they are almost too buttery.  I'd probably start with 1 cup of butter next time and see how that works out.  I'm just hoping now that they'll freeze well.

Original recipe:  Morning Buns via Brown Eyed Baker (via Cook's Country)

Maid of Honour tart (Almond Tart Bake-off)

When I saw the September Avid Baker's Challenge for almond tarts, I remembered this similar recipe and decided to do a bake-off taste test.  The original recipe yields 12 tarts, but doesn't specify what size.  I reduced the recipe by 1/6, assuming I would get two tarts.

Not having a proper mini tart pan, I used a 4.25" pie tin.  I quickly realized this was far too large.  For one, I had to roll the pastry paper thin to get something that would fit in the tin.  That didn't seem right.  And then I saw that not only would a single teaspoon of jam barely wet the bottom, but the filling I'd made certainly wouldn't cover it.  I decided to make a single tart, but I still had to add more jam to give a respectable layer, and barely had enough almond filling to spread across it.  I suspect the tarts should have been made in something more the size of a standard muffin tin (which would explain the yield of the original recipe), or even a tassie tin.  The photo in the original recipe shows tarts with a substantial depth, although they looked at least 3" across.  I still don't think a teaspoon of jam would produce that thick of a layer in anything larger than a tassie, if that.  Of course the difference in size would also affect baking time, and hence the texture.

In the recipe for the almond tart challenge, I described the kitchen tools I use for these small batch exercises.  That would explain the odd measuring sizes below.

Here's what I used:

Pastry
225g 37.5g (1/3 cup) plain flour
135g 1½ tablespoons butter
2 tsp 1/3 teaspoon icing sugar
1 whole 3g egg yolk beaten with 1 tsp scant 1/2 teaspoon cold water

Filling
50g ½  tablespoon unsalted butter
75g 1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 dash spoon + 1 smidgen spoon heaping teaspoon self raising flour
pinch of baking powder
2 whole 6g (scant 1/2 teaspoon) beaten egg yolk
100g 16.7g (3 1/3 tablespoons) ground almonds
zest of 1 1/3 lemon
1 tbs ½ teaspoon cream
6 1 teaspoon damson jam
Icing sugar for dusting

Put all the pastry ingredients in a food processor and pulse until a dough is formed.  Wrap in cling film and set aside for 30 minutes.  Preheat oven to 400F.  Roll out pastry and cut 12 circles with a pastry cutter, large enough to fit the bottom of your tin and up to 1" up the sides.  Place a circle of pastry into the tin and gently press down and against the sides.

For the filling, cream the butter and sugar together thoroughly.  Stir into this the flour and beaten egg yolk. Stir and then add the almonds, lemon rind and finally the cream.  Add a teaspoon of jam into each little tart and then a spoonful of filling.  Divide any leftover filling between the tarts.  With the back of a teaspoon gently smooth over the filling so that no jam is showing.  Bake for 20 minutes; remove from the oven and leave in the tart tin to cool.  (If you try to remove them when they are still hot the pastry, which is very fragile, will start to crumble and break.  As they cool the pastry firms up.)  Dust with icing sugar and serve with a dollop of vanilla ice cream.  Store in an airtight tin.

Conclusion:  These were very good -- the lemon contrasted nicely with the mild plum jam, and the almond filling rounded it all out.  They weren't particularly unique tasting, though. Conventional flavors, surprisingly.

Recipe:  Maids of Honour via Maria Dernikos, using a recipe by Clarissa Dickson Wright.

Grape Molasses and Tahini Rolls

 

I so wish I had remembered to take a photo of these before I baked them.  It was a sorry sight, and I was sure they were going to bake up into runny hockey pucks.

I thought I had worked with puff pastry before, but nothing about it seemed familiar.  The (purchased) dough was very soft and unforgiving, and one of the first things I noticed was that the sheet was much smaller than expected, about 12x12".  I knew 1.5 cups of filling was going to be too much, so I reduced it to half.  (I think that was still too much.)

It rolled up fine, but as soon as I started to cut the slices it squished into a sticky, messy glob.  I suddenly found myself wondering what were the cautions I'd read about with puff pastry -- something about the edges that would cause them not to rise.  I couldn't remember, but whatever it was I was sure I was violating every rule.

So I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. As the recipe warns, these are not very sweet, but sweet enough, especially since they are very rich.  In fact, while I love the flavor combination (a sort of Middle Eastern take on peanut butter and jelly), I would like to pair it with a less rich dough, since tahini is already very high in oil.  (But the crispness of the puff pastry is so nice!)

I did not bake on parchment paper -- with all the released oil, these slid around loosely on the pan.  I baked them 4 minutes longer; at 15 minutes they were just golden, but I was concerned the centers might be squishy.  The sugar was just starting to burn on the bottoms at 19 minutes, but the centers were still too soft for my taste.  I think reduced filling would help with that.  (I would spread it very thinly next time, and consequently add sugar.)  Also perhaps using an air-bake pan.

Conclusion:  Delicious, a different flavor from the usual, and easy to make.  But I'll be making some adjustments next time.

Recipe:  Grape Molasses and Tahini Rolls via Taste of Beirut