Your email address is required to begin the subscription process. We will use it for customer service and other communications from Milk Street. You can unsubscribe from receiving our emails at any time.
Nichole Accettola's Cinnamon Knots (Kanelbullar)
The fall is a festive but hectic season in my family when all three of my children and two of my closest friends have birthdays. By the end of it, I’ve usually had more than my fair share of streamers, popping balloons, and layer cakes. While Danes prefer delicious, airy whipped cream and fresh fruit layer cakes to be served at birthday parties, according to my Swedish friends there’s no need to eat cake at all. Instead, a special day like this calls for Swedish cinnamon knots. When you taste these, you may agree. Unlike the American cinnamon buns that I grew up on in Ohio, traditional Swedish cinnamon knots have no icing and just a sprinkle of crunchy sugar on top. These knots are chewy and succulent, with a unique shaping technique that resembles a pile of silky ribbons.
Excerpt from Scandinavian from Scratch: A Love Letter to the Baking of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden [A Baking Book]
Soft Bun Dough
Tangzhong
Directions
-
01First, 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.
Pardon the interruption
You need to be a Milk Street Digital Member to see the full recipe
JOIN MILK STREET DIGITAL & PRINT
12 WEEKS FOR JUST $1
and get access to all of our recipes and articles online, as well as in print.
GET DIGITAL & PRINT