10 tips in 10 days! 6: Enriched sweet buns – Bread taste, texture and norms with a long rise

Here in Sweden most recipes for Cinnamon/Cardamom buns that you find in books or baking blogs will tell you to use a rather high amount of commercial yeast, that boosts the fermentation timings. This next tip is a very basic one; Lower the amounts of yeast drastically and let time create consistency for you! Just make sure you keep it a bit cooler so the butter wont go bad/leaky!

It might not sound very revolutionary to increase fermentation, but if you haven’t tried any type of enriched dough (added fat and sugar etc) that’s been siting for an extended period of time, you’ll definitely notice a difference in taste, texture and overall stomach sensation when you do. This is definitely my experience and once I started to lower the yeast and sourdough starter to a fraction of what I used to; the baked buns just kept being the best ones I made so far! A lot of people out there still thinks that long fermentation is for loaves of bread only.

In a dough with about 1000g of flour, I now use 3-4g fresh yeast (that’s 1g dry yeast equivalent) and about 40-50g sourdough starter (or just skip the fresh yeast entirely and increase the starter to 100g – and get a different texture in the finished buns). In a normal room temp environment, the dough will be ready for baking in about 10-12 hours.

In my experience, a dough with a lot of butter (and other enrichment) will either need a lot of mechanical force to come together in to a silky smooth one, or a lot of time. The later alternative can make the most hopeless feeling dough in to a pleasure to work with! I mix the dough in the morning, and shape it into buns after lunch, letting them rise as shaped buns until dinner time. As an alternative (when working) I mix the dough in the evening, let it sit as a bulk at a lower temperature overnight and shape early in the morning (to be baked just a couple of hours later).

The pictures in this post was from today’s cinnamon bake. I just love the look of proofed buns and the promise it makes, as you can see. All the angles are there!