Directions

1. 01

   First, make a soft bun dough. This basic bun dough recipe is a great starting place for someone who wants to delve into making yeasted pastries. The recipe requires first making a tangzhong, a technique originally from Japan that is used to make supermoist milk bread. The method was spread across Asia by Taiwanese cookbook author Yvonne Chen and then popularized in the Western world after cookbook author Christine Ho wrote about it in English. To make a tangzhong, you cook a small portion of milk and flour together before adding it to the remaining dough ingredients. This step allows more hydration to be incorporated into the dough, resulting in bread that stays moist, tender, and fresh much longer. While the technique is not traditional to Scandinavian baking, many modern bakeries in Copenhagen and elsewhere have started incorporating it into traditional recipes, as I do here, for superior results. Higher hydration levels make this bun dough quite sticky, which is why I strongly recommend making it the night before baking and refrigerating it overnight. This gives it a chance to firm up a little, making it easier to work with.