This is the early February Facebook Group challenge. For these buns you make a starter dough and a sugar solution on the day before you want to bake. To be authentic you would need to use a cone of piloncillo from Mexico, which is made by boiling down and shaping cane syrup...I can just imagine the lovely flavour. Where I grew up in Mauritius one of the perks of knowing someone who worked at a sugar refinery was being offered a bottle of 'Sirop Canne'..a dark brown reduction that tasted not too sweet but full of other complex flavours. I would love to be able to try this in baking! However having neither piloncillo or Sirop Canne, I used Billington's dark brown muscavodo sugar from Mauritius and a teaspoon of molasses.
I followed the instruction for the day of baking, by starting the yeast in a little of the syrup...once before I had used my dried yeast with a molasses solution, but had had difficulty, and once again it did not look right...maybe the natural minerals and salts in the molasses overwhelms the yeast, so instead I first got the dried yeast going in a little plain water, with a tablespoon of the sweet solution. It worked beautifully.
I used wholemeal flour from our local water mill at Charlecote, hazel nuts and candied citron and lemon peel, as well as some cherries.
Most Mondays I have a little friend who comes to taste my buns and he loves singing his song about buns with cherries on the top..so he'll need to sing one about buns with cherries in them, when he has one of these on his next visit! Here is my friend Penny reading to my bun taster in chief.
Here is the dough ready to be portioned, with nuts and fruits all throughout the dough.
The buns rose beautifully and filled the house with a wonderful aroma as they cooked in the oven....they are now cooling ready for Friday bun day.
Beautiful rolls, Noelle, and I like the fruit and nut additions, it sounds very wonderful and fragrant. I used to do a lot of bread baking long ago, before the gluten-free diet and the low-carb diet.
ReplyDeleteAt least you have In a Vase on Monday to bring that little weekly spot of creative gratification. At least we now know that for some very few people gluten free is quite a life saver.
DeleteLooks fantastic! I'm not surprised you had problems getting the yeast to start in the molasses mixture - I make bagels, which always rise perfectly, until I tried making cinnamon and raisin bagels with a fair amount of sugar in the mixture. They just wouldn't rise. I'd assumed the yeast would absolutely love sugar and over-rise, but apparently too much sugar slows down or stops yeast working. Sweet doughs rise VERY slowly. Your idea of getting the yeast to start working prior to adding more sweet ingredients sounds perfect, and I hadn't thought of that! That's what I'll try next time :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment..its often in the practice of different recipes, and in researching solutions, that you find that something like getting the yeast started first helps. For sweet doughs saf gold yeast works fairly well, so I shall use that one from now on.
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