Buttermilk buns

So game day, I'm at home. I'm going to be smoking a pork butt all day, and relaxing anyway, so I figure I might as well make the buns that we're putting the pulled pork on. And I love baking bread and buns. It's just like smoking meat. Even when you aren't doing anything, work is happening. Yeast is growing, dividing and making your bread rise. Call me nerdy, but I find that exciting...

Conveniently, Michael Ruhlman just posted a fun bun recipe, so let's try that:

28 oz all-purpose flour

20 oz buttermilk, room temp
2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast
½ oz salt
2 tbsp honey
butter for greasing a springform pan
1 egg
~1 tsp poppy seeds

Mix the flour, buttermilk, yeast and honey until moist. Let sit for 20 minutes, then knead in the salt, for around 10 minutes, or until the dough gets to be a nice, elastic bread dough. Cover and set aside to rise. Or if you're a weirdo, take the dough outside, photograph it, then move it back inside, covered, to rise.

I forgot about it for about 4 hours (isn't making bread grand? 2 hours to rise. 4 hours. whatever). And it looked really great.

Butter a springform pan. Cut off roughly 4 - 4 ½ oz chunks of dough, and roll them into little balls. Fit them snugly into your pan, like this:

Cover, and let rise in a warm place another hour or so. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Beat the egg until a uniform colour and consistency. Homogenous.

Brush a really, really thin layer on the risen buns. The first time I ever egg-washed a bread-dough, I was wayyyy too aggressive with the egg, and the bread ended up tasting like it had a layer of overcooked scrambled eggs on top. Yuck. So now I'm pretty careful. Really, you just want to wet the surface of the buns.

Then sprinkle on the poppy seeds, to whatever thickness is your fancy.

Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until nicely browned (took me about 32 minutes). And shriek in girlish delight when you remove them, and they look like this.

Oh, yeah, baby! Remove from the pan, tear off a bun, slice in half, and serve. I served them with pulled pork. Yum. A tiny bit too tall for pulled pork sandwiches (oops), but really, really awesome.