Our Breakfast Buns

This is another recipe using buttermilk so I hope you've found your supply by now! This recipe has an interesting twist - the flour is soaked overnight in buttermilk before being baked. I first encountered this idea in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Her theories are a bit too complicated for me to go into now (buy or borrow her book - it's well worth a read) but one of her ideas is that soaking grains before use (as practised in many traditional cultures) makes them more easily digested and makes their nutritional content more easily available.

We call these Breakfast Buns at home because that's when we usually have them - they make a great weekend treat. The recipe is very much like that for buttermilk scones - but they are more moist and lighter than ordinary scones. They keep better too - although if your family are anything like mine, there wont be any left to keep. They also, I assume because of the soaking process, need considerably less bicarbonate of soda than ordinary scones require.

Our Breakfast Buns

325g plain wholemeal flour (spelt makes a brilliant alternative)

90g chilled butter, in cubes

200ml buttermilk (maybe a little more)

100g (very approximate!) plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

pinch of salt

Put the flour in a large non-metallic bowl. Add the cubed butter and rub the fat into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs (see picture). Or use a food mixer of course!

Add the buttermilk and stir in with the flat blade of a knife (this bit is definitely better done by hand rather than machine). You are aiming for a mixture like a very wet bread dough - if your mixture isn't sticky, add a little bit more buttermilk. You need something that looks like this:

Cover the bowl with a plate, clingfilm or a plastic bag and leave overnight at room temperature.

The next day, put your oven on to 220C (Gas 7). Line a baking tray with baking parchment and get a round pastry cutter ready - I use a 6cm cutter. Add the salt and bicarbonate of soda to the dough and then add enough plain white flour to make the dough into a rollable state, like this:

I find the amount required can vary wildly - start with a couple of tablespoons and add more as required. Start mixing with a knife and continue with your hands.

Flour your work surface and use your hands to flatten the dough into a round disc about 2.5cm (1 inch) thick. Cut out rounds with your pastry cutter and transfer to your baking tray - they can be pretty close together - like this:

Keep cutting and re-rolling the dough until it's all used up - I can usually get around 14-17 buns from the mixture.

Put them in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes, until risen and golden brown. Leave to cool a little on the tray then transfer to a cooling rack. Eat quickly with lots of butter, and spread with honey, jam or (especially) marmalade.

It's Shrove Tuesday today and we forgot to have pancakes this morning - so we'll have some after dinner I think. Our boys prefer thick American style pancakes - which is good because I am useless at making the thin kind - I think you need a really good frying pan too. We like to use the banana and buttermilk pancake recipe, as blogged here by Kit in South Africa, from Nigella Lawson's Feast - they're quick and easy to do, and I like to tell myself that the banana is getting a little bit of extra nutrition into their tummies. And, of course, it's another use for buttermilk... It really is a useful thing to have in your fridge!