I recently spied a crazy-good-looking recipe at The Pastry Affair.  Her Chocolate-Filled Buns recipe made me positively drool, and I immediately wanted to work with yeasted dough again.

But as much as I love chocolate, I had another filling in mind for my version.  You may recall a few months ago when the Daring Baker’s Challenge was a yeasted meringue coffee cake.  Not only did I have a lot of fun tinkering seriously with yeasted dough for the first time, but I also produced two awesome flavors: Kitchen Sink (all the sweets I had left in my pantry – dark chocolate, white chocolate, and toffee bits) and Savory Breakfast (bacon, killaree cheddar, and chives).  Guess what I’m whipping out this time?

That’s right.  It’s bacon time.  (Iiiiit’s baaaacon….iiiit’s baaaacon time!)

Ever since I threw together the bacon, killaree, and chives I haven’t been able to get the combination out of my brain.  The flavor was so potent, delicious, and mouth-watering that I’d actually been planning to make another coffee cake with it.  But why repeat an old recipe, when I can instead try out the same flavors in the a new and convenient hand-held package?

Plus – oh hush oh brush – Kita from Pass the Sushi announced she’s doing a week of breakfasts.  With my amazing powers of persuasion, I convinced her to let me join in:

Me: “Cool, can I contribute?”

Kita: “Feel free to join in!”

Boom.  Convince’d.

So I started Tuesday night with the mixing and kneading.  Because my mixer bowl was a mess from swiss meringue buttercream trials and tribulations, I tossed it in the dish washer and opted for some old-fashioned kneading by hand.  And actually, it was super therapeutic.  If I’m doing smaller portions of dough like this in the future, I think I’ll always knead by hand.  The mixer is fantastic, but sometimes it feels nice to work personally with the food.

Since I have a busy week I decided not to finish the buns that night and put the dough in the fridge for an overnight rise (thanks to Stephanie of Clockwork Lemon for explaining this to me).  When I pulled it out the next day, it had pleasantly doubled in size.  Chemistry is magic.

Then Wednesday I split the dough into considerably uneven lumps (d’oh) and started working on the filling.

Now, I’d assumed I’d be pawning off most of these goodies onto my coworkers (I certainly wasn’t going to eat 12 breakfast buns, no matter how tasty), but the more I thought about it, the more I was concerned no one would eat yeast buns filled with bacon and cheddar.  I know, it’s crazy.  Unfortunately most of the people I work with politely refuse my baked goods with that trademark one hand up (as in “oh no, I coudln’t possibly”) and the other over their stomach (as in, “Shhh, I’m protected my unborn child.”  …Or maybe as in “I’m watching my figure”).

That being said, I realized if I wanted to get rid of these, I’d have to come up with a slightly healthier version.  Thence came the ricotta and spinach filling.  Still nommy, just less fatty. ^_^

ANYway, I’m sure you’re wondering now they turned out?

Meh.

Yeah, I was a little disappointed at the final product.  Don’t get me wrong, they were hot and yeasty, and the filling (particularly the bacon-cheddar) was delicious, but the buns themselves were pretty underwhelming.  A bit tasteless, and I think a bit firmer than I would have preferred.  Also, as displayed slightly by the pictures, I think I need a better way for the filling to stay in the dough’s center instead of blooping to one side.

So not a failure (not at all!) but the next round, I’ll need to do something different.  Any suggestions? 😀

Savory Breakfast Buns

Adapted from The Pastry Affair.

Makes 12 buns.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour, plus extra for the counter top if not using a mixer
• 1 cup lukewarm milk
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp butter melted, plus 1 extra tbsp for topping
• 2 tsp yeast
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp salt

Bacon’n’Cheddar Filling (6 buns)

• 4 slices bacon
• 1/4 cup shredded killaree cheddar
• 2 tbsp chives

Spinach’n’Ricotta Filling (6 buns)

• 1 cup spinach, chopped
• 1/2 cup part-skim ricotta
• 1 tsp black pepper

Instructions:

1. Sprinkle the yeast over the lukewarm milk and let sit for 5 minutes.
2. Mix the sugar, milk, salt egg, and prepared milk/yeast together until fragrant.
3. Add 3 cups flour (I add it 1 cup at a time for sanity) and mix together until it forms 1 solid piece of dough; may be slightly sticky.
4. Either toss the dough into your mixer for 4-5 minutes, or sprinkle some flour on your counter and knead for ~8 minutes.
5. Lightly cover in oil and toss in a bowl.  Cover with plastic and let rise for 2 hours in a warm draft-free area, or in your fridge overnight.
6. While the dough rises, cook your bacon to your preferred consistency and chop it into small pieces, shred your cheese, cut up the chives.  Toss them gently together to create the bacon’n’cheddar filling.  Sautee the spinach in a few tsps of olive oil until soft/wilted, then mix with ricotta and pepper to create the spinch’n’ricotta filling.
7. After the rising period (let the dough return to room temp if you let it rise in the fridge overnight) punch the dough down and cut it into 12 equal portions and roll into balls.
8. Push an indentation in each with your thumb and fill the indentation with ~1 tbsp filling, then cover with dough and re-roll to seal seams.
9. Put the rolls onto a lightly greased baking sheet, cover with a towel, and let rise for another 20 minutes.
10. Preheat the oven to 400F.
11. Brush rolls with 1 tbsp of melted butter and bake for 8-12 minutes or until lightly browned.
12. CONSUME!