Saturday 29 June 2013

Folded and Baked Sweets

Dan Lepard is a genius and I have the buns to prove it.

I used the recipe for Sweet Brandy Buns found in his book The Homemade Loaf.

I had second thoughts about tackling a dough and liquor combination; and I did indeed use a little too much of the sweet brown stuff but it paid off with fantastic results.

I started by making the ferment which was easy enough; the one change I made here was to use a bread mix with added yeast instead of just using pure yeast. This was only because I wasn't able to find yeast at the time.



I then went on to making the dough; sticking to the thrice kneaded method described in the recipe.

The final step before popping them into the oven was to fold and leave the dough to rise. As I'd used self-rising flour for the dough I halved the time required to set it aside before shaping into rounds for the oven.




The recipe was easy to follow and produced a nicely balanced flavour of sugar, brandy, and warmth.
The smell alone was too sublime to resist so I tucked in when they were barely out of the oven.

Despite the self-rising flour; the buns came out a little denser then expected but this was likely due to me not leaving the dough to rest long enough before heating, the additional bread mix, and also the fact that I used a muffin-tin as opposed to a flat one.

Next time I make these I will experiment with using a mixture of  both almond flour and white flour and of course I'll be sure to have some yeast.

The Bread Loaver


Wednesday 19 June 2013

Sweet Buns

Not sure why I'm thinking Sweet Brandy Buns... but I am. I wanted this book to try my hand at making simple fresh baked bread. When I got it, I was surprised by the number of sweet bread recipies included. Ever a lover of buns; why not make my own.

The Bread Loaver