Brioche Bun

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Brioche bun, they are delicious, sweet, sticky and not even too difficult to bake. For a long time I wanted to bake some brioche type of baking but thought it would be too difficult. Luckily I dared to try it last weekend and it really wasn’t any harder than baking normal bread buns!

Tang zhong

In this recipe I used a technique called tang zhong. It basically means that you mix flour with milk (or water) in a 1:5 ratio and then heat it until you get a jelly-like sauce (or until you reach 65 °C/149 °F). This technique is from Japanese origin and makes your baked goods soft with a fluffy texture and allows it to stay fresh for a little longer.

If you like the technical stuff: because the starch in the flour will gelatinize it can absorb a lot more water than usual. This will make your dough a lot more wet than normally, but you won’t have the disadvantages of a wet dough because the moist is already absorbed by the starch.

Supplies

• Kitchen scale
• Stand mixer (optional)
• A small bowl and a big bowl
• Small sauce pan
• Stove
• Baking tray with baking paper
• Oven (180 °C/356 °F)

Ingredients

For the tang zhong

• 20 grams of flour
• 100 ml of milk

For the dough

• 495 grams of flour (I used spelt flour)
• 145 ml of milk (lukewarm)
• 9 gram dry yeast (or 24.3 gram fresh yeast)
• 60 grams of sugar
• 11 grams of salt
• 2 eggs
• 75 gram of butter (at room temperature)

How to bake

Tang zhong

• Mix the flour and milk in a small sauce pan until you have a smooth paste.
• Put the pan on low heat.
• Stir the paste until it thickens (don’t let it boil!), if you have a thermometer keep the temperature below 65 °C/149 °F.
• Take the paste off the stove and let it cool to room temperature

Brioche bun

• Add the lukewarm milk with the dry yeast and sugar. Stir and put aside until foam is forming on top of the mixture.
• Mix the flour and salt together before adding the yeast mixture, knead well.
• Knead in the tang zhong.
• Add one egg and one egg yoke, knead well.
• Add the butter.
• Knead until the dough comes together and the butter is completely incorporated in the dough, this will take for about 10 – 15 minutes.
• Cover the dough with a wet towel or with a good fitting pan lid and let it rise for 2 hours or until the dough is doubled in size.

• After the dough had its first rise, carefully knead the dough for 1 minute.
• Divide the dough into 12 balls (you can make more or less depending on the wanted size of your buns) and place them on a baking tray with baking paper. Cover the dough balls with a moist tea towel or plastic wrap and let them rise for another hour.
• Pre-heat your oven to 180 °C/356 °F.
• Mix the egg white with a tablespoon of water. Coat the buns with the egg mixture.
• Bake your brioche buns for about 20 minutes until they are nicely browned.
• Enjoy!

Notes

• When your dough is to wet, add some more flour. If the dough is to dry, add some more milk. Either way be careful and don’t add to much!
• If you want to cover your buns with a topping (like for instance sesame seeds) you can add it after you coated the buns with the egg mixture.
• You can coat the buns with some melted butter (about 25 gram) directly after they come out of the oven.

If you liked this recipe you might also want to try these other recipes!

• Soft Butter Buns
• Rye Bread
• Butter cookies

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