Black Forest Buns - We Knead to Bake#25

I replaced a part of the flour with Whole wheat flour. The buns turned a bit dense, but the taste was spot on! You can use APF completely or use Bread flour and APF together. The choice is yours!!!

• Take water and milk together in a saucepan, heat it in the microwave for 40 seconds.You don't want it to be boiling, it should be hot not boiling. Add the butter to this hot milk. Let it melt, then add the sugar to it and stir to dissolve. Let the mixture cool a bit, till that time, let us get ready with other ingredients. When i say cool a bit, i meant let it come to lukewarm, since hot liquid will kill the yeast and a very cold liquid too does the same. So,it is very important that the liquid should be lukewarm, when you touch, it should still be warm, but not scalding hot!!!

• As usual i used my food processor to knead the dough, you can also hand knead the dough. Take all of whole wheat flour, chia meal and 1 cup of all purpose flour, yeast, salt in the processor bowl and run it in slow speed for 2-3 seconds for the mixture to mix well. Now slowly, add the milk-butter mixture to this and knead a smooth elastic dough.

• Once it forms a sticky dough, take it out of the bowl and knead it on a flat kneading surface by adding the remaining ½ cup APF for about 6-8 minutes. The finished dough will still be elastic, a bit sticky when you touch it, but doesn't stick to the surface or the bowl.
• Place the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl, turning the dough till lightly coated with oil. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel and let it sit in a warm place, to double in volume, for about 1 - 1 ½ hours. Once it doubles in volume, take it to the kneading surface again and punch it down to release the excess air. I divided the dough into two halves, just to ease the process of rolling.

• Now place the dough on a flat surface, i used a rolling mat, and roll it out into an approximately 9 x 12” rectangle. Spread the cherry compote/ strawberry jam over the leaving a ½ inch all around. Sprinkle the chocolate cake crumbs on top of this. Roll the dough away from you, as snugly as possible, pinch to seal the edges.It is important to roll up the dough as tightly as possible because this dough does swell up quite a bit while baking.
• Cut the roll into 1 ½" wide pieces with a very sharp serrated knife. You should have 12 pieces for the full recipe and 6 for half of it. Place each piece in a mould, you could use muffin cases also (or make collars using foil or parchment paper to fit well around each piece) and then on a baking tray. Otherwise place them in a lightly greased rectangular baking tin with raised sides or a cake tin leaving enough space for them to expand . I used flat rectangular baking tray with individual collars for each buns.If you place them too far apart, they will spread rather rise in height. Cover loosely, and allow to rise, for about 1 hour or till almost double.

• Bake at 180C (350F) for 25 - 30 minutes, until the buns are done and nice golden brown in color. Remove from oven to a wire rack and cool completely. 

• Melt the chocolate chips in a microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Drizzle the buns with melted chocolate and serve.
• The buns freeze well, i froze a batch for a month and used. If using from the freezer, then wrap the buns in a foil, bake @ 150C for 10 minutes and serve warm.