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Recently I tried using this recipe to make bacon buns:

Bacon Buns Recipe - Lithuanian Lasineciai

The buns flavor turned out fantastic, however they were too hard and dry. How would you go about making these buns look more like the picture in the link? i.e., how would you get the bread to become very fluffy?

A few ideas I had in mind, and I could be wrong:

  • Add more bacon/fat?
  • Mix the dough longer/shorter?

I mixed mine long enough to combine ingredients, however the dough was very wet and was barely workable after the second time the dough was mixed after rising.

Also as a general rule of thumb, before putting dough in the oven, is it safe to assume that hard dough will create hard buns and soft dough will create soft fluffy buns, or is there a different way to measure/assume this?

Mat
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Bortix
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    That recipe is highly enriched with sugar, milk, butter, and eggs. I am surprised you are getting a dry result. Can you describe in more detail the outcome you are getting, versus the one you are hoping for? How are you testing when they are done--I wonder if they are over baked.... – SAJ14SAJ Jul 23 '13 at 01:53
  • The recipe has 8 oz of milk, and 3 large eggs (which is 6 oz, about 4 oz of which is water) for about 12 ounces of liquid; and 3 cups of flour, which is about 13.5 - 15 oz of flour. This seems like a reasonable hydration overall, even fairly high. – SAJ14SAJ Jul 23 '13 at 02:02
  • Could the baking temperature be an issue? – Mat Jul 23 '13 at 05:15
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    Are an experienced bread maker, having problems specifically with this recipe? Or are you a newcomer to breadmaking. Asking because it affects what answers are appropriate. – slim Jul 23 '13 at 10:00
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    @Mat very good suggestion. I have experienced highly enriched bread turning dry when I baked it at a rather low temperature (about 150 C) and it took ages to bake. Looked right as it should, dark crust and all, but was unpleasantly dry. – rumtscho Jul 23 '13 at 10:29
  • I have baked bread before however i would not say that i am an expert. I created the milk butter sugar mixture and added it to the flour. The dough itself was very sticky and not workable. I let the dough rise for about 15 minutes. Mixed the dough to remove the puffyness. Let it rise again for 15 minutes. kneaded the dough, added bacon into the buns and put it in the oven. Could it be that i put the buns in the oven too early? I also baked for 30 minutes, possibly too long? How would i test the bread to see if it is ready? Is the toothpick a reasonable test method? – Bortix Jul 23 '13 at 21:17
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    I would suggest to maybe try first kneading until the dough starts coming of the bowl, then a longer rising time (an hour or so), not kneading them too much after adding the bacon and mostly **letting the buns rise again before you bake them**. I put buns in an cold oven set to 160C and bake for about 30mins (my grandmas heirloom procedure) ... always get super soft and fluffy buns. – BobbyZ Jul 23 '13 at 23:10

2 Answers2

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I tend to agree with SAJ14SAJ here. Enriched doughs such as this quickly overcook. The size of your buns, which unfortunately are not in the recipe, will vary your cooking time greatly. Try a higher temp oven for a shorter period of time or try larger rolls. Use a thermometer and shoot for no more than 190 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nicholas
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An enriched dough like this should be very soft. If they are hard and you followed the instructions exactly, I would suggest checking your oven. It's quite possible that your oven thermostat is inaccurate (and home ovens can be VERY inaccurate).

Not directly related to keeping the buns soft, but to something else in your question: Doughs with a lot of butter are frequently sticky and difficult to work. A good way to get around this is to keep the dough (and other ingredients) chilled. It will slow down how fast it rises, but keeping the butter in a more solid state while you're working makes the dough a lot easier to handle.

SourDoh
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