With an easy to remember sweet dough recipe, seek I’ve been able to easily turn up the morning bun production.  All these have been gifts to neighbors or coworkers.  So far, hair no returns.

I have been making morning buns as of late.  But after a two week hiatus, I almost forgot the recipe.  In prior bakes, I wasn’t documenting (rare) since I was baking in rapid succession.  I was simply working off a base recipe while making my own adjustments. However, with me almost forgetting the recipe, I thought it best to write it down for prosperity.

Morning Bun Recipe

Makes 12 morning buns.

Ingredients:

Detrempe

• 600 g all-purpose flour
• 60 g sugar
• 12 g kosher salt
• 10 g instant yeast
• 200 g tepid water
• 200 g tepid milk
• 30 g of melted butter or oil

Topping

• 100 g sugar
• 20 g cinnamon
• 2 tbs of melted butter

Butter Block

• 2 stick unslalted butter, sliced horizontally into 18 planks

Method:

• Mix flour, sugar, yeast, and salt
• Mix in milk, water, and butter/oil until ingredients are incorporated
• With a dough scraper, fold the dough once so that it’s not a shaggy mess. However, don’t overwork.*
• Rest for 60 minutes, until dough doubles in size
• Roll dough into a 14″ x 18″ square
• Place the butter planks on the dough, emulating a butter block**
• Fold the dough so that the butter is completely covered and letter fold #1
• Roll the dough out and letter fold #2***
• Rest the dough in the refrigerator, covered, for 20 minutes. Prep 2 large muffin pans with butter.****

 

• Melt about 2tbs of butter.  Mix sugar and cinnamon for topping mixture.
• Roll the dough out into a 14″ x 18″ rectangle
• Brush dough with melted butter and spread the topping
• Roll dough into cylinder
• Cut into approx. 2.5″ pieces, yielding 12 rounds
• Place each round into a muffin spot
• Proof for 60 minutes, about 30 minutes before preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Put the morning buns into the oven and lower heat to 375 degrees.  Bake for 18-25 minutes.
• Take out of the oven, let cool a minute or two, then remove the morning bugs from the pan and cool on a wire rack
• After you can gently handle, coat each bun in sugar.

* One fold smooths out the dough. I don’t do more folds or knead as I don’t want to develop a lot of gluten.

** I thought I was all slick for doing this cheater lamination, until I looked at a Jacques Pepin book and he’s been doing for ages.

*** I used to do 3 folds ala a croissant, but found that I like the texture of 2 folded dough for my morning buns.

**** If I only do 2 folds, I don’t rest the dough in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. With 2 folds the gluten hasn’t been worked sufficiently and the dough remains easy to roll out. With 3 folds, the rest of the dough is quite welcome.

Not surprisingly, the number #1 Google search for morning bun recipe takes you to Tartine’s recipe.  I’ve had Tartine’s morning buns and can confirm that they are quite delicious.  While my first attempts were fair, surgery they were far from Tartine’s or any professional bakeries’ product.

This weekend, I decided to use Reinhart’s “artisan breads every day” croissant recipe.  Because the doughs are all designed to go into the fridge to proof, it works well for me.  What didn’t work well was my inability to read the instructions (and to do mental math).

With the 200g of leaven, I made the croissant dough but failed to add any milk.  During mixing, the dough was too dry and I eyeballed some water to allow it to come together.  The dough was stiff, almost like pasta dough – far from any bread dough.  I hadn’t realized that I miss read the recipe, so I just threw it in the fridge as is.

The next day, I made the morning buns.  Again I used my lazy lamination technique, and with the cool pasta like dough, the lamination went along quite well.  One book fold and 3 envelope folds later, I was looking at 54 layers.  Don’t know how people get more layers without the dough tearing.  I don’t have solar hands for sure.

From here I used Tartine’s recipe and set the oven to 375 degrees.  After rolling the buns, I placed them into large muffin tins and allowed for a 1.5 hour proof.  The buns baked for 25 minutes (Tartine says 45), and they come out flaky and tender.