Almond (anything) + bread = bliss, in my book. These almond buns struck me as potentially winning additions to the Christmas brunch table. Or perhaps as a pre-brunch snack. If they last past my getting them off the baking sheet, that is.

Please note that the Bun Dough recipe (p. 152) has an error. The fix is listed in the errata section of the NY bakers website: http://www.insidethejewishbakery.com/files/IJB_Errata.pdf. Scroll down until you see "Bun Dough" and the correction is listed there.

These buns call for three sub-recipes (bun dough, almond filling, and simple syrup), and please note that the almond filling recipe calls for 3 cups of cake crumbs (which I'm assuming most of us will have to make ourselves, not living in a bakery), bringing the baking dominoes that need to fall in line up to 4. Or five if, like me, you plan on concocting your own almond paste (p. 256).

Clearly, these are buns for the bold. But what better way to end 2011?

Looking forward to your posts and pictures!

The Roman sugar buns (maritozzi) are made with yeast dough and is a sort of sweet bread croissant filled with whipped cream.

Picture here: http://croce-delizia.blogspot.com/2011/06/maritozzi-con-la-panna.html

Maritozzi con la panna

Ingredient: 450g Italian flour Caputo Rossa 00 (or strong flour) - 200g water - 50g rice flour - 60g butter - 90g Sugar - 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk - 8 gr fresh yeast - 1 teaspoon of malt (of honey) - 8g salt - 40g corn oil - 1 tablespoon of honey - grated zest of one orange - white egg to brush - sugar syrup.

Method: bring to boil the water with half of orange zest and warm the oil with other half zest orange. Let cool.
Dissolve yeast and malt into the water whit orange zeste (at room temperature). Add 200g of flour and mix until thoroughly incorporated and smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for one hour. Mix the remaining flour (240g) with rice flour.
After 1 hour add half flour and sugar and mixing dough with a planetary mixer on low speed (1 ) for half minute. Add the egg and remaining flour and sugar while continuously beating at low speed. Add egg yolk, honey and salt and increase mixer speed (1,5). Mix at medium speed until dough is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Then, add the softened butter in two times and when the dough is very elastic add the oil very slowly, a little at a time, stopping occasionally to prevent the mixture returns to be too soft and not more elastic. Cover and let rise (26°C) for about 2 hours.
Turn dough out on to floured surface and make fold. Folding dough simply means pulling one end towards the center and then pulling the other end's towards the center (See here - picture 3, 4, 5 and 6 ). Cover and let stand.
At this point, if desire, transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate (4°C) overnight (12 hours) - remove the dough from the refrigerator about two hours before starting next steps.
Dividing and shaping: Divide the dough into 75-grams pieces. Shape the pieces into rolls. Let stand 15 minutes, then form the balls into oblong loaves and place on baking sheets. Cover and let rise (28°C) about 1 hour.
Brush with egg white and bake in a 350°F (180°C) oven for 15 minutes or until light brown. Remove from oven and while still hot, brush surface with sugar syrup (to prepare the syrup, boil 130g of sugar and 100g of water together).
Let the maritozzi cool, and then cut them in half and place whipped cream inside.

This recipe comes from an italian blog "Profumo di lievito" , where you can see recipes with step by step pictures.

After forty plus years of baking breads I decided to create "fun buns" for my grandchildren.  Each weekend I would make a batch of buns.  I kept notes about what worked and what didn't.  Since I wanted the option of using the buns for sandwiches I started with ones that were basically round in shape.

My first attempt was four turtles.

I then wanted a pig.  I thought it would be cute to serve pulled pork on a piggy bun.  Ironically, the pig proved to be the most difficult for me.  Even now I'm not confident the ears and nose will stay in place.  I tried to cut the ears in but couldn't secure the tips.  And then the nose . . . but for now I'll post pictures and talk how to's in a later post.  I did finally find a design I liked . . . but it's a rather difficult one.

At one point I got so frustrated with trying to make the quantity of buns I needed to feed a group that I even considered making heads and tails . . .

Since dough is a living organismI decided I needed some easy designs so I could make some difficult and some easy in the time frame I had to work in.  I created a chick and hedgehog that are relatively easy.

At this point I was using whole wheat dough.  I decided to try sweet roll dough for Easter bunny and chicks.  The dough raised so much after shaping that the designs were distorted.

Snails worked okay, the center raising up was actually desirable.

I continued on with the bunny and came up with options.  One has cut in ears and the other is basically two pieces, body and head with the ears cut with scissors.

Then came the fish.  Since my sons had aquariums I decided to start with tropical fish.  I wanted texture and tried grated cheese on top . . . but, I got "ick" . . . for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a fungus.

Being a Minnesotan, I needed more fish, lots of fish.

Then it was football for the guys.

I love frogs . . . one easy, one difficult.

Want to ruin my day?  Ask me how to keep ears on the mouse.  I sure don't know how . . .

Ahhhh, bears!  Who doesn't love bears!

How about a family of bears?

At this point I started looking on the internet for ideas.  I found the book Kids' Ideas with frozen dough by Rhodes.  I made several of their designs and learned some new techniques.

I especially liked the cat for Halloween.

And now the reason I bake.  My grandson's first batch of "fun buns".  HE LIKES THEM!

Fun link:  http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/05/11/hongkong.bun.festival/index.html?hpt=Mid

I'm looking for sourdough hamburger buns recipe, very soft hamburger buns. Is here anyone who can help me? Thanks!

After having delicious lobster rolls with New England style buns at RM seafood in Las Vegas, I became obsessed with soft, toasty rolls with just the right amount of crunch. I decided to buy a New England hot dog bun pan (of course, the buns can be made with an ordinary sheet pan, but I just felt like purchasing a unique piece of equipment).

I used a 3/4 recipe of the  golden pull-apart butter buns on King Arthur Flour's online blog, replaced all the liquid with milk for flavor, and increased the hydration to about 70%:

I followed the instructions on KAF's blog, but I divided the dough into 10 equal pieces, and in the shaping step, I rolled each piece out to a thin sheet and rolled them up into logs. Each log was placed into a groove in the pan:

Here they are, fully risen and just placed into the oven. A 3/4 recipe makes a pretty good amount of dough for the size of pan. The proper amount of kneading will allow this dough to triple, almost quadruple in size.

Immediately after taking them out of the oven, they were brushed generously with butter to soften the crust:

Just before eating, they were sliced apart and then slit in the middle, like so:

Toasted them on each side with a little butter

The crunchiness of the toasted surface went perfectly with the snap of the natural casing hot dog. The king arthur recipe is very rich, buttery, and sweet.

I love how these buns stand up so straight:-). I'm pleased with how this pan makes a bun that's not too big and not too small. One of my pet peeves is a hot dog that's drowning in a mountain of bread. Personally, I'm addicted to the toastiness of the New England style roll. I don't think I'll go back to regular soft hot dog buns. Was it worth the $25 to buy this special "unitasker?" I would say yes, but I just wanted a new toy. I'm thinking of it as a pre-moving gift to myself, before I make the great schlep from San Francisco to New Haven, CT.  Maybe there are other uses for it, too. Enchiladas?

There are 2 of us in this household, so the 10 buns give us enough for dinner and plenty for leftovers tomorrow. I'll probably use the remaining 6 buns to use up the leftover chicken meatballs in marinara and the leftover Italian sausage.

I had read on Chowhound in a 2003 post that Puritan Bakery in Carson, CA supplies most notable SoCal burger chains (including InNOut, Fatburger, and Tommy's, among others) with their buns. 

Interesting article in last week's Orange County Register about Puritan & their process:

From "The secret behind SoCal's best burgers" by Nancy Luna

Puritan buns are made the same way your grandmother used to bake bread in the kitchen – only at a much larger scale... Flour, water, shortening and yeast are mixed and set aside in a large trough where it rises and develops flavor...

At the end of the four- to six-hour fermentation process, the mixture (not considered dough, yet) bubbles up – becoming a taffy-like blob.

Plant workers and machines then take the sponge mixture and add sugar, yeast, salt, flour and water to make dough, which is then shaped into buns before baking. The end result of the seven-hour process is a spongy, pliable bun...

While its base sponge-dough recipe is the same, Puritan customizes buns for restaurants and chains with specific needs. For example, In-N-Out's four-inch buns are "tweaked" (Puritan won't say how) for better grilling results. Tommy's buns are made to better support its heavy chili slathered burgers. Islands restaurants use a larger, five-inch bun. Seeded buns are delivered to The Habit.

Full article at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/puritan-293345-burger-bakery.html

I learned from the photos that Puritan does use hamburger bun pans. In the photo gallery, there is a decent photo showing the bun texture. 

So in a recent thread I posted a recipe that I based on a bread someone had seen on TV. I just did my best guess, based on provided ingredients and my own experience. 

I figured I should post the results, because it was mostly theoretical, but I believed it would work. The goal was yeasty, soft, fluffy bread, and use of a preferment. 

Here's the recipe, makes eight (8) 92g rolls/buns, or one good-sized loaf of bread...hence BreadBuns!

• 100% hydration starter (sourdough or not) 100g (26.50%)
• All purpose flour 375g (100%)
• Water 218g (58%)
• Brown sugar 38g (10%)
• Salt 10g (2.65%)
• Yeast (instant) 12g (3.30%)
• Melted butter 26g (7%)
• FINAL DOUGH WEIGHT (g) 778g

First, make a 100% hydration starter with 50g flour, 50g water and a pinch of yeast, mix, cover and leave at room temp for at least 6 hrs (or use some existing sourdough starter). In this case, I used some starter that I had around. 

Combine starter with remaining ingredients. This is after 1 minute of mixing at low speed. 

Mix with dough hook for 6 minutes total at KitchenAid speed #2 (low speed); this is the end result: soft, supple, quite smooth and satiny. 

Flatten, then roll into log and/or shape into ball and let rise for 1 hr in warm place, covered. 

Shaped and ready for rising...

In the bucket, ready to rise

After a 1 hour rise, it's doubled.

I decided to shape into 92g rolls, placed in a greased 9x13 pyrex dish:

Cover and let them rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, til doubled. Preheat oven to 400F

Bake for 23 minutes at 350F on middle oven rack.

Here's how they look after 10 minutes, just starting to get a hint of browning.

After the full 23 minutes, they're looking nice and brown. 

Remove from oven, carefully remove from pan and let cool on rack about 10 minutes before devouring. 

Crust and crumb are soft, light, tender and fluffy as expected. I think they could use a bit more brown sugar though, a touch more sweetness for this kind of bread. 

I like to store these in a Ziploc plastic bag to maintain that fluffy softness. Enjoy!

I've been looking for a recipe for buns suitable for hamburger, sausage and peppers, grilled portobello mushrooms, pulled pork, or the like. Indirectly I came across this recipe, Dan Lepard's Soft Baps (Manchester Guardian, Oct. 6, 2007) replying to this TFL posting http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21843/high-percentage-fats-bread .

They feel wonderfully soft, just like my wife wants in a sandwich bun. I'm making turkey burgers with pesto tonight for dinner. Seemed like the time to try these.

This happened during the bake: Kissing Baps; who says our UK friends are reserved?

The mottled surface indicates there will be a few gas bubbles, but I'm expecting a sandwich bread, closed crumb. I'll take a crumb shot tonight when we serve them, and post it later.

The crumb

As expected, closed but not dense, very slightly chewy. Can't say much about flavor; it was swamped by sage, thyme, pepper and turkey. This is a keeper; my wife agrees.

David G

My sister loves dinner rolls/buns. So I figure I'd use it as a chance to really try out French folding. My previous attempts have been somewhat half-hearted. But this time, I thought I’d really do it right, focusing on stretching and trapping air.

For the formula:

Strong Canadian white flour 13.3% protein

75% hydration

0.5-0.6% instant yeast

2% table salt

French folded for 10 mins till smooth (funnily, wasn’t that sticky even at 75% hydration!), then lightly flour the top/counter and form into a ball. Put in floured bowl and rest for 1 hour, 1 fold and rest another 45 mins before shaping (65g balls) then give it a 30-40 min proof. Baked till internal temp reached 208F (around 22-25 mins at 450-500F).

As for steaming, 2-3 mins before putting the buns in the oven, I put in a (loaf) pan of boiling water (about a cup or cup and a half) on the top rack, which I removed about 8-9 mins into the baking stage (didn't mist oven because I lost my trusty spray bottle).

Et voila! It’s night and day compared to my previous breads (using same formula) that were rather dense probably due to my pathetic kneading skills :P Or, maybe I’ve been underbaking all this time? Plus, they snap-crackled and poped while cooling for something like 10 mins. I could hear them at 10 feet away!

Anyway, here are photos.

I'm really surprised what a difference the French fold method made for me with high hydration dough. Thanks to everyone here who have given links and hints on it. For the sake of curiosity, next I will try the exact formula and method with a poolish to see what difference it has on the fluffiness and aroma of the crumb.