NTC 007: No Time to Write
Please give me a quantum of solace this week, as I am both extremely tired after going back to university, and a bit nerve-wracked because we had a covid case in my department yesterday. But, I promised you a recipe for the good cinnamon buns, and so - for your eyes only - here it is:
Firstly, I hope you tried making last weeks buns. They’re good! I made them for one of my classes this week, and the lecturer said that they have the perfect amount of sweetness in them. The problem is that they don’t last. They taste amazing when hot, and then when the buns cool down, they become a bit boring.
This week’s buns taste good when hot and when cold. However, they are also a lot more work. In general, this is how it goes with cooking; you end up making a lot more effort to have nicer food. We are lucky in that we can go to the supermarket and have buy things where a lot of the hard work has been done for us - the bacon has already been cured, the chickpeas have been blended into hummus, the milk already made into cheese. And thank god for that. I love putting the work in when I’m in my kitchen, but I must draw the line at fermenting milk on my windowsill.
One of the ways that this recipe is more work is that you make a tangzhong mix for the dough. I’ve never heard anybody say that word so I don’t know how it sounds. What tangzhong means is that you take some of the flour and milk, mix it together, and heat it up, making a sticky paste that goes into main dough. This bit of pre-cooked dough allows the rest of your dough to retain moisture better, making these buns softer and nicer.
The Ingredients
For the Tangzhong:
75ml tablespoons water
75ml milk (any kind)
45g white flour
For the Dough:
70g melted butter
120ml milk, slightly warm
2 teaspoons instant yeast
½ teaspoon ground cardamom (optional)
1 teaspoon fine salt
50g granulated sugar
400g white flour
1 large egg
The tangzhong mix
Cinnamon Filling:
70g butter
15g flour
Pinch of fine salt
45g light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
The Process
Tangzhong!
To make the tangzhong, mix 75ml water, 75 ml milk and 45 g flour in a saucepan. Whisk until combined and no lumps remain. Place saucepan over medium heat and cook mixture, whisking constantly, until it thickens, about 1-2 minutes. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just make sure it’s a bit thicker. I ran out of regular milk when I was making this and used oat milk, so feel free to use whatever vegan alternatives you have lying around.
Melt!
Melt the butter in the milk. Don’t boil them! Put it on a low heat and make sure there’s no lumps of butter. Once that is done, let the things cool down while you prepare the next stage.
Dough!
The original instructions I have for this say to use a stand mixer. Lots of people don’t have one of these, but you can also do this by hand. By the way, the German for stand mixer is ‘Küchenmaschine’, meaning literally, ‘kitchen machine’. If you don’t have a kitchen machine, don’t worry, lots of people don’t.
Mix the yeast, cardamom, salt, sugar and flour in a bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer) and mix them together. Add the warm milk and butter mixture, the egg and the tangzhong (it doesn’t need to be hot, just throw it in) to the dry ingredients. Mix with the dough hook of your kitchen machine, or POUND that dough by hand. It should look sort of silky and wet when it’s ready.
WAIT!
Now that you’ve made the dough all loose and relaxed, cover it and wait for about an hour. Maybe two hours, if your kitchen is cold. This is the biggest problem with these recipes that use yeast. We can use some of the time to make the filling, but you should also read a book, maybe go for a walk.
Filling
The filling is really easy: mix all the ingredients together. I forgot to melt the butter, but when I got back from my walk the butter was ready to use.
Make them buns, hun
At this point, turn on the oven to 180 degrees celcius, and line a baking tray with a sheet of baking paper.
Roll out the dough on a floured worksurface. I always have to flour my rolling pin so that the dough doesn’t stick to it, so keep your bag of white flour nearby. You’re aiming for a sort of big rectangle shape.
Next, take your cinnamon and butter filling and cover the dough with it. I found this really hard, and ended up using my fingers. I definitely did not do a good job, but the end result worked fine. Be lazy! Just throw it on!
Finally, fold up the dough like a giant letter. Take the bottom third of the dough, and fold over and back onto itself. Then take the top third, and fold that over the other two layers. Finally, cut it into stripes.
Twizzle it
After all that hard work, the final trick to these buns is to twist the strips of dough, and then stick them together. The dough is kind of sticky at this point, so it’s a lot easy than it sounds, and the goopy cinnamon mixture on the inside makes it really easy to twist them. Hold each end, and then turn your hands the opposite ways. Fix them together by tying them into a little knot.
Oven
Put them in the oven for about 25 minutes, and then take them out when they look good.
That’s it!
OK, between covid scares and going back to uni I need a break. I’ll be back in two weeks. I’m working on a rice dish from Iran called Tahdig, which is sort of like crispy rice. It’s insanely delicious, but also a regional delicacy, so I probably cooking it wrong. Come back in two weeks to be either intrigued by my rice efforts, or outraged at how wrong I am doing Tahdig (if you already know what it is)
Be nice
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ciocia-wienia-1 support these feminists in Vienna, who help women from Poland and other countries where reproductive medicine is difficult to access. Imagine if you had to travel to another country for something as difficult as an abortion. I'd hope that there would be somebody there to be kind to me.