Honeycomb Buns

Aahh! the pursuit of happiness. If you see, the things that make you happy are generally very small things. One of the things that make me happy is my trial of a new dish that comes out good.

But the post today is about a recipe that made me very happy, as I have been contemplating about trying my hand at bread and bun making for a long time. The original recipe was for stuffed honeycomb buns or khaliat-nahal as it is known in Arabic. Apparently these buns with a sweet filling are made during Ramadan for aftar. I however chose to make plain unfilled buns as I had never made them before and wanted to team it up with a chicken curry I was dishing out for dinner.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups all purpose flour,

1 cup lukewarm milk,

1 1/2 tsp dry active/instant yeast,

1 tsp sugar,

1 tsp salt,

40 grams melted butter,

2 tbsps milk for brushing the dough,

Sesame seeds for sprinkling

Method

Cool the melted butter and mix it in with 2 cups of the flour and salt.

Combine the milk, sugar and yeast and set aside till it froths. The time taken for this step will depend on the quality of your yeast.

Once the yeast mixture froths, add it to the butter and flour mixture and knead into a dough. You should get a smooth and elastic dough which is not sticky. Add as much of the remaining ½ cup of flour as you need in this step.

Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a well-oiled bowl, turning it to coat completely with the oil. Cover and let it rise till it doubles in volume.

Turn the dough out onto your work surface and cut it into 2 halves. With your palms, roll out each half into a 9 inch long rope.

Cut each rope into 1” pieces so you have a total of 18 pieces. Roll each piece into a smooth ball and place it in a well-greased round cake tin. Arrange the dough balls in concentric circles, filling the base of the cake tin.

Cover this with a kitchen towel and let it rise for about 30 to 40 minutes. Brush the tops with milk and sprinkle the sesame seeds over this. Preheat the oven for ten minutes at 180^oC and bake the buns at 180^oC for about 25 minutes, until they’re done and turn a nice golden brown on top.