Ingredients for 12 buns:
- 450g of white, high protein flour
- 15g of potato starch or flour
- 10g of sugar
- 20g of fresh yeast (I think it might not be easy to find in US so active dry or instant should work too, use about 8g or less).
- 125ml of milk
- 125ml of lukewarm water
- 7g of salt
- 25g of neutral oil (sunflower, canola)
This is primarily an overnight recipe so: In the evening:
- Warm up the milk to about 40C (110F)
- In a small bowl or a mug, mix the warm milk, yeast, sugar and a tablespoon of flour. Set aside until it starts to foam.
- In a big bowl mix flour, starch, and salt. After that add water, yeast-milk mixture and oil. Mix everything with a spoon until dough starts to form. Knead it, I use dough hook on kitchen-aid and mix it for ~2m tops but it should be quite fast too manually (and the dough is super soft).
- Let it rest for 5min and knead it for short while again. (I sometimes skip this step).
- Put the dough in lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap (the dough will rise 2-3x).
- Put the bowl into the fridge for overnight rise. (6-10h).
In the morning:
- Pull out the dough onto a counter, don't worry if it deflates (we want it to deflate).
- Now we will be rolling and dividing the dough. Roll the dough with your hands, divide it in half, and cover one half so it doesn't dry out.
- Roll the half and divide it into a half once more, then roll out the 1/4 we have and divide into 3rds.
- So the process is: divide in 2, divide in 2, divide in 3
- Roll each small part into a strip/roll about 30cm/12in long.
- Buns are formed by tying a overhand knot in the middle, then the end coming from the bottom is going up and inside the knot, and the other end coming from the top is going down and into the bun from the bottom. See the picture. Place the ready buns on parchment lined baking sheet.
- After tying all buns, let them rise covered with a cloth for 25-30mins. While that happens, heat the oven to 220C (430F).
- Brush buns with whole beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame, poppy seeds or black caraway seeds.
- Bake in the over set to top and bottom heat for 20-25min.
- Pull out of the oven, and transfer onto write rack while still hot, wait few minutes and dig in while they are warm.
You can make them the same day. Just don't put the dough into the fridge and let rise for 1-2h.