Tea buns

Tea buns is perhaps not the correct name, as these buns does NOT contain any tea, but they are excellent to enjoy together with a cup of tea or coffee, if you dislike tea !!!

I found the original recipe in the cooking book called "Te og kager året rundt", but I have made three significant changes.

The first modification is, that I have reduced the amount of yeast from 50 g to 25 g combined with doubling the first raising period. I have reduce the yeast amount in order to remove this yeasty flavour, which you sometimes find in buns/bread, where you are using 50 g yeast.

The second change is, that I have increased the amount of flour in order to have get a certain ratio between flour and liquid, where the dough is not too moist or too dry. The "magic" ratio for me is 1000 g flour to 700 g liquid (liquid being milk, water, melted butter, yogurt, buttermilk etc).

The third adjustment is, that I like to work with something giving a twist to the taste, this time in form of  Mélange Pain d'épices, which is a mix of various spieces being cinnamon, anise, clove, ginger and cardamon.

Tea buns: 16 buns

• 100 g butter
• 500 g milk
• 25 g yeast
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon Mélange Pain d'épices
• 2 teaspoon sugar
• 850 g flour
• 1 egg for glazing of the bun dough

1. Melt the butter.
2. Stir the yeast and cold milk together, add the melted butter into this liquid.
3. Add the egg, salt, specie mix and sugar into this liquid.
4. Add the wheat flour. Knead the dough together, I usual knead for 10 minutes.
5. After the kneading process, let the dough raise warm for 1½-2 hour.
6. Divide the dough into equal size buns, I always a kitchen scale for this purpose in order to ensure equal baking of the buns, I target a dough amount of 80 g per bun.
7. Place the buns a baking tray covered with baking paper, and let the buns raise for another 30-45 minutes.
8. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 200'C.
9. Before baking the bun glaze them with an egg being together into a homogeneous mass.
10. Bake the buns at 200'C for 15-20' minutes.