Happiness is a warm bun.
As the holidays approach we’ll be adding new recipes to help you design a classic menu — plant-based!
These buns were a staple at Grandma Lena’s house. We ate them fresh from the oven, pulling them apart and spreading a thick layer of butter or homemade strawberry jam on each piece. The dinner table always had a basket full of them.
Makes a dozen large rolls, or 14-18 smaller rolls.
Ingredients
2 cups unsweetened soy milk
¼ cup plant-based butter, softened
5 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon yeast
5-6 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons salt (make sure to add this after the first rise. Salt will slow down yeast’s ability to rise, and if there’s too much salt, it might kill the yeast)
Directions
Scald the unsweetened soy milk in a small pot. Don’t bring it to a full boil, you just want little bubbles to start forming around the edges.
Add the plant-based butter and sugar to the milk.
Turn off the heat, but stir until everything dissolves. Set it aside to cool until it’s lukewarm. (It shouldn’t be hot at all, you’ll burn your yeast and ruin the bread, so always err on the side of a bit cooler.)
If you’re using instant yeast, you can just mix it in with dry ingredients. But if you’re using traditional yeast, then you’ll want to dissolve it in a ½ cup of lukewarm water. Add this yeast liquid to milk mixture. Make sure to balance out the soy milk if you’re dissolving yeast. The total liquid amount should be 2 cups.
Add 3 cups of flour to a big mixing bowl and mix really well with your wet ingredients. It will be sticky. It’s called a “sponge.”
Set it in a warm place to relax for about half an hour. I like to put a small heater in my bathroom, cover the dough with a tea towel and close the door. This is what my mom used to do at our freezing cold old farm house. But if your house isn’t a furnished icebox, preheating the oven and placing the dough covered on top of the stove (stove off!) will work too.
Once your sponge has doubled in size, add the salt and remaining flour. Knead the dough in the bowl until you have incorporated all of the flour and it’s not sticking to your hands.
Pull it out of the bowl and keep kneading it on the counter for a bit. Add flour if it’s too sticky and water if it’s too dry.
Using a greased muffin tin, pull off a small piece of dough and form three little balls out of the dough, and put all into one muffin tin. If you want to make larger rolls, make larger dough balls. If you want smaller rolls, make smaller dough balls.
Once all the muffin tins are full with their clovers, brush with a bit of plant-based butter on the top.
Cover it back up with the tea towel and let the buns rise almost double in size. This might take up to 1 hour. While they’re rising, preheat oven to 415°F.
Pop them in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until they’re golden brown on top. Don’t overbake!
