- Makes 12 buns – Ready in 24 hours (as long as you have a mature sourdough starter available to use) –
Gather together for the buns…
50g melted butter (heated in the microwave for 20 seconds on HIGH).
120ml lukewarm milk (heated in the microwave for 20 - 30 seconds on HIGH).
50g white caster sugar / white granulated sugar.
1 medium egg (lightly beaten).
150g of mature sourdough starter (it needs to be very active and bubbly, see below for how to get it to this stage).
300g strong white bread flour.
1 tsp salt (fine 'table' salt, not salt flakes/coarse grains).
plus...
5 tbsp plain flour to dust the work surface / dough.
Gather together for the filling...
6 tbsp lemon curd (supermarket 'finest' type is yummy).
115g sultanas.
Gather together for the topping…
250g icing sugar (sieved).
2 tbsp of fresh / defrosted lemon juice (or just use 2 tbsp cold water).
6 glace cherries (halved to make 12 decorations).
Get making…
1. FIRST THING IN THE MORNING OF THE DAY BEFORE you want the Belgian buns to be ready, remove the sourdough starter from the fridge (if that's where you keep your starter, I usually keep mine on the kitchen worktop and only put it in the fridge if I'm not baking with it for 3+ days). As you need 150g to bake the buns with, you'll need to discard less of the starter than usual, ensuring you have a 1/2 cup (120g) of starter left in the Pyrex bowl (I now use a Pyrex - aka toughened glass - bowl to store my sourdough starter, after having three regular glass jars crack, each incident was a near miss each time for my poor starter "Mary" - eek!) To that 120g of starter in the Pyrex bowl, add a 1/2 cup (120g) of lukewarm water - at this stage stir well to loosen the starter - then add a 1/2 cup (60g) of wholemeal flour. Stir well and wipe down the sides with a clean damp cloth, cover the jar with a clean, dry cotton cloth (secured with an elastic band) and put it to keep warm in the oven, WITH JUST THE OVEN LIGHT ON (the heat from the bulb will keep the oven slightly warm) for 3 to 6 HOURS - however long it takes for your particular starter to become very active and bubbly. If it is a COLD DAY then pre-warm your EMPTY oven for 1 minute at 180 C ish - set a timer for 60 seconds or it will get too warm, before turning the heat OFF and just leaving the oven light ON. Set a timer to ring after 3 hours to remind you to check your starter and in the meantime put a note on the oven door so that no one unwittingly turns the heat on and frazzles your starter - eek!
2. Check your sourdough starter half way through the six hours, i.e. after 3 hours (set a timer to remind you to do this). If it looks bubbly and active - great, get on with the recipe steps. If it looks inactive or hungry (i.e. if a layer of watery 'hooch' liquid has formed within the starter or on the top) then stir in the hooch and do another cycle of 'discard all but 1/2 of a cup and feed with 1/2 cup warm water and 1/2 cup wholemeal flour'. If it is a COLD day, repeat the quick oven pre-warm (warm the empty oven for 1 minute at 180 C ish - set a timer for 60 seconds or it will get too warm, before turning the heat OFF and just leaving the oven light ON to continue to keep the sourdough starter cosy).
3. After the three or six hours, so in the EARLY / MID AFTERNOON OF THE DAY BEFORE you want to bake, start to make the enriched dough. In a medium-large bowl (ideally the bowl of a stand-mixer-with-dough-hook-attachment if you don't want to knead by hand) mix the 50g of melted butter with the 120ml of lukewarm milk and the 50g of white caster / white granulated sugar.
4. If necessary, let the buttery-milky-sugary mixture cool for a minute or two until it is lukewarm and not hot (so you don't scramble the egg or frazzle the yeast!), then add the beaten medium egg and the 150g of happy, bubbly, active sourdough starter. Stir well to combine.
5. In a SEPARATE medium bowl, combine the 300g of white bread flour and the 1 tsp of salt. Mix well.
6. Tip the flour/salt mixture into the wet ingredients and mix well with a metal spoon, just until there are no floury patches.
7. Then using a stand-mixer-with-dough-hook-attachment, knead for 10 minutes, the dough will go from really rather wet to firmer and beautifully elastic.
8. Cover the bowl with a clean damp tea towel (flat across the top of the bowl, not touching the dough) and put it in the oven with just the oven light on (this will keep the rising dough at a constantly warm enough temperature) for 4 HOURS. Again put a written note on the oven (so it isn't turned on fully by accident) and set a timer to ring to remind you when 4 hours have passed. During its time in the turned-off-but-light-on oven, the dough should rise a bit, but DON'T WORRY if you can't see much of a difference, all will be well.
9. In the EARLY EVENING OF THE DAY BEFORE baking day, clear a large space on your (clean) worksurface and dust the worksurface with 3 tbsp of plain flour. Tip out the dough and sprinkle 1 more tbsp of flour on top of the dough (you may need even more if the dough seems to be sticking). Shape the dough into a large rectangle using your hands to press/ease it gently into shape. Dust the dough with another 1 tbsp of flour and then (to finish off shaping) use a rolling pin, to achieve a just-smaller-than-A3-paper-sized rectangle (approximately 40cm x 25cm) of dough.
10. Spread the 3 tbsp of lemon curd all over the surface of the dough rectangle, then sprinkle over the 115g of sultanas - press them down firmly but gently so they adhere to the surface of the dough.
11. Roll up the dough by lifting the long edge closest to you and rolling it up away from you (you may need to use a fish slice to help unstick it from the surface if you have rolled the dough onto a less-well-floured part of the worksurface). You will end up with an overly-long looking Swiss roll. Transfer it to a cutting board.
12. Use a sharp knife to cut the 'Swiss roll' in half, and then each half into six - it's hard to cut through the sultanas! You will have twelve roughly equal pieces, which look like swirls when you lay them facing upwards.
13. Line a large, fairly-deep-sided baking tray (the biggest sized one you can fit into your fridge OR use two smaller deep trays, I use two 9" square trays with 5cm deep sides) with greaseproof paper, or even better are reusable silicone liners (I use liners shaped like this Toastabag reusable liner designed for a 1lb or 2 lb loaf tin, but which works well in many different tins.
14. Arrange the 12 swirls (with the swirl pattern uppermost) in the lined tin(s) leaving 2cm or 3 cm gaps between each swirl - they will swell and fill the space.
15. Cover the baking tin(s) with PLENTY of foil (Lakeland sell 'extra wide' foil, and Tesco sell some that is 450mm / 45cm wide), so there are no gaps. Use two lengths of regular width foil at right angles if you don't have any extra-wide foil, but this does risk a drier end result. Stretch the foil across the top of the tray (not touching the buns) to keep moisture in, to ensure the buns stay soft during proving and baking. Neither a reusable beeswax wrap, nor a damp tea towel, nor another baking tray placed over the top should be used instead, as they don't seal the moisture in sufficiently, plus the foil increases the heat received by the proving dough from the oven-lightbulb.
16. Put the generously-foil-covered tray(s) in the oven-with-just-the-oven-light-on (to keep a constantly warm temperature) for 2 or 3 HOURS so the swirls puff up - set a timer to remind you.
17. Then put the tray(s) of uncooked dough swirls in the fridge overnight, still covered with the foil.
18. On BAKING DAY ITSELF take the COLD uncooked dough swirls out of the fridge and (still covered with foil) allow the buns to warm up to room temperature for 30 minutes. You should see the buns swell a little more, if they don't then your room is probably too cold - move them to a warmer place and leave them for a further 30 minutes. If any buns swell up into each other, gently push them further apart.
19 . Next, remove the foil (you can wash, save and re-use the same piece(s) of foil many times), and place the tray(s) containing the buns in a COLD OVEN. If you are using two trays, one tray should go on the middle shelf and one could stand on a wire grill rack at the base of the oven - both trays baked fine without needing to be swapped over in my oven. This cold oven baking method seems unusual, but it works and it saves time and energy as there is no need for wasteful oven-preheating.
20. Set the oven to 200 C (180 C fan) or Gas 6 and bake the buns (uncovered) in their tray(s) for 25 - 30 minutes. (Part of this time will be taken up with the oven heating up, this is fine as it gives the buns time to rise before a crust forms during baking).
21. Once baked, carefully place the hot buns on cooling racks to cool for 30 minutes (before icing them).
22. To ice the buns, mix the 250g of sieved icing sugar with the 2 tbsp of fresh lemon juice (or just use cold water), to make a very thick-yet-still-just-falls-off-the-spoon icing. Add a few extra drips of cold water if needed, but beware as runny icing will not stay neatly on the buns! Generously dollop a tablespoon of icing onto the centre of each bun and the icing will spread slightly itself (if it doesn't spread at all then stir in a few more droplets of water to the icing in the bowl)- creating a thick circle of icing on the top of each. Some may drip off the side of any steeply sloping buns, just scoop these drips away with a teaspoon if you want a tidy effect. Set 1/2 a glace cherry in the middle of each icing circle. Suddenly they look very professional!
23. To store, keep the (cooled) buns in an airtight tin at room temperature and eat them up within 3 days. On day 2 and day 3 they can be re-freshed by heating individual buns in the microwave on HIGH for 20 seconds.