And with Paul Hollywood’s Belgian Buns in the bag that is the Bake Off 2021 Bake-along complete! I am quite chuffed with myself for seeing it all the way through, and thoroughly enjoyed making these Belgian Buns as the final technical challenge of the season! A fluffy enriched dough, filled with a spiral of homemade lemon curd and sultanas, and finished with some lemon icing and a glacé cherry. Perfect with a hot cup of tea on a cold and snowy afternoon like today!
Paul Hollywood’s Belgian Buns are actually quite easy to make, but that might just be because I tend to make this type of thing quite a lot. Buns are a big thing in Germany where I grew up, and as Nussschnecken, a Nusszopf of a Mohnstrietzel were always popular with my family, I have made these things regularly! So make sure you go check out those recipes, and I will share with you a few tips for making this kind of bake!
Top Tips for Making Paul’s Belgian Buns
There are a few elements to master when making Paul’s Belgian Buns: an enriched dough, a homemade lemon curd, and a thick water icing. Check out some of my tips below so that you can hopefully achieve a perfect result! 😊
The Enriched Dough
An enriched dough is different from a usual bread dough made with flour, salt, yeast and water, as it contains additional sugar and fat-containing ingredients that “enrich” the dough. This particular dough contains a little sugar and is also enriched with milk and butter. This can make enriched doughs slightly sticky and harder to work with, and also slows down the proving. I actually think Paul’s recipe below calls for very good quantities of liquid, making this dough fairly easy to work with and knead by hand. If you are lucky and own an electric hand or free-standing mixer, then you can also use this to knead the dough for a few minutes.
Like I said, enriched doughs take longer to prove as the added fat components slow down the action of the yeast. I have a good tip though for proving dough if you live somewhere cold (like I do) and do not have the luxury of the Bake Off tent and have a proving drawer. You can simply create your own warm and humid proving drawer I your oven! Simply place a bowl of boiling water at the bottom of the oven, and your bowl (or tray) with the dough or buns on a wire rack above it. Close the oven door (make sure the oven is off) and the boiling water will create a warm and humid environment for your dough to prove! Easy! For a video demo, check out my video on How to make Bauernbrot (German Bread)!
Homemade Lemon Curd
Whilst it is obviously easiest to take the shortcut of using shop-bought lemon curd, making your own is actually not that difficult!
The most important thing when making your own lemon curd, is to make sure that the eggs (which are the thickening agent of the curd) don’t scramble in the mix! This can happen if your bowl of water beneath the curd becomes too hot and starts cooking the eggs! So just be careful of that, and you will be fine! If you want some more tips and a recipe to make a slightly larger quantity of lemon curd to keep in the fridge, check out this Baking Basics post here.
Shaping the Buns
Shaping the buns is probably the trickiest part of this recipe, as you want to make sure they all have a nice spiral in the middle and are all equal in size! The trick is to make sure that you roll the dough and filling up tightly, but not too tightly. You need to make sure that the roll gives the dough enough space to expand during proving. That way the buns rise outwards and become wider, rather than the dough being forced upwards and you ending up with really tall buns that lose their spiral appearance.
To make sure you get 12 fairly equally sized buns without having to use a ruler or scales, a good tip for cutting the buns is this: Start by cutting the role in half, and then halving each half again. That way you end up with four pieces of the roll, which you can then cut into three. This way you should end up with 12 fairly evenly sized buns.
Water Icing
Water icing is very easy to make, and all you really need is two ingredients: Icing sugar and water! Or in this instance – lemon juice! Paul’s recipe on the Bake Off website here said to use water and lemon zest, but I’d recommend just using lemon juice (I always have a bottle of lemon juice in the fridge) instead! Much easier and saves having to zest another lemon! Water icing can turn from powdery to extremely runny in the matter of a few drops of liquid, so it’s always a good idea to add the liquid very slowly and gradually, mixing well between each addition. If you do go too runny, however, you can just add more icing sugar to salvage it. For this recipe, you want the icing to be very thick.
Paul’s recipe also said to just spoon the icing over in a big blob. But I preferred making a slightly smaller quantity (the buns are already quite sweet) and drizzling it over as the bakers did in the tent. So that is what my instructions and recipe below recommend, however, do feel free to just spoon it on top if you prefer!
More Bake Off Technical Challenges
I am absolutely obsessed with the Great British Bake Off and have challenged myself to attempt all of (or at least the ones that are “realistic” – I won’t be making pitta breads on a camp fire in the back garden!) the technical challenges from the programme! I have tried quite a few already, so make sure you check out some of the other recipes and see how I got on!
- Mary Berry’s Religieuses
- Mary Berry’s Fraisier Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Hand-raised Chicken, Bacon and Apricot Pies
- Mary Berry’s Bakewell Tart with feathered Icing
- Paul’s Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes
- Mary Berry’s Frosted Walnut Layer Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Cottage Loaf
- Mary Berry’s Homemade Jaffa Cakes
- Paul Hollywood’s Wagon Wheel Biscuits
- Mary Berry’s Victoria Sponge Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Mini Pork Pies
- Mary Berry’s Viennese Whirls
- Prue’s Vegan Chocolate and Raspberry Tarts (S2UC Special)
- Pizza Star Bread (Junior Bake Off)
- Mary Berry’s Coffee and Walnut Battenberg Cake
- Paul’s Crusty White Cob
- Paul Hollywood’s Rainbow Bagels
- Prue Leith’s Malt Loaf
- Paul’s Jammy Biscuits
- Paul Hollywood’s Olive Ciabatta Bread Sticks with Homemade Tzatziki
- Prue Leith’s Sticky Toffee Puddings with Sesame Tuiles
- Prue Leith’s Prinzregententorte
- Paul Hollywood’s Baklava (22cm)
- Paul’s Caramel Biscuit Bars (Twix)
- Prue Leith’s Vegan Sausage Rolls
- Prue’s Sablé Breton Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Sticky Belgian Buns
- Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing
- Prue’s Garibaldi Biscuits with Feathered Chocolate Icing
- Paul Hollywood’s Pain au Raisins
- Paul’s Spicy Beef Tacos
- Paul Hollywood’s S’mores
- Prue Leith’s Pistachio Praline Ice Cream Cones
- Vegetable Spring Rolls
- Prue’s Vertical Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Raspberry Tarts
- Paul Hollywood’s Devonshire Splits
Paul Hollywood’s Belgian Buns | Bake Off Technical Challenge
Recipe
Ingredients (makes 12):
FOR THE DOUGH:
- 500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
- 50g caster sugar
- 7g salt
- 7g fast-action yeast
- 40g unsalted butter, softened
- 120ml whole milk
- 120ml water
- A little vegetable oil, to grease the bowl
- 1 egg, beaten (for the egg wash)
FOR THE LEMON CURD:
- juice and zest of 1 large lemon
- 50g caster sugar
- 25g unsalted butter
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
FOR THE FILLING:
- 150g sultanas
TO FINISH:
- 175g icing sugar
- 2-4 tsp lemon juice
- 6 glacé cherries, rinsed and cut in half
Method:
- To make the dough, place the strong flour, sugar and salt into a large bowl and stir to combine. Make a well in the middle and add the yeast to it.
- In a small pot, gently warm the butter, milk and water until the butter has melted and the mixture is lukewarm. If the liquid is too hot, leave it to cool slightly before adding it so that you don’t kill the yeast.
- Pour the milk and butter liquid into the flour mixture and stir until the ingredients come together in a rough dough. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes until soft and smooth.
- Place the dough into a clean boil that has been lightly greased with vegetable oil, cover, and leave to prove for 1 hour.
- In the meantime, you can prepare the lemon curd. Put the lemon juice and zest, caster sugar, and butter into a heatproof bowl. Set the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, making sure the water isn’t touching the bottom of the bowl. Gently stir the mixture until the butter has melted and the sugar starts to dissolve.
- Whisk together the whole egg and egg yolk, then stir it into the lemon mixture. Continue whisking in the bowl of the simmer water, making sure it doesn’t get too hot or the eggs might scramble. Cook the mixture for around 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the lemon curd is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat and leave to cool, then chill in the fridge until needed.
- Once the dough has doubled in size, lightly dust your worksurface with flour and roll the dough into a 30x40cm rectangle.
- Using the back of a metal spoon or palette knife, spread the lemon curd over the dough in a thin layer. Then scatter over the sultanas.
- Starting from one of the shorter ends, roll the dough up to create a roll. You want this to be fairly tight, but not too tight to give the dough some space to rise during the second prove. Use a sharp knife to cut the roll into 12 equal pieces and lay the buns onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Keep some space in between the buns to allow them to expand.
- Cover the tray with clingfilm and leave the buns to prove for a further 45 minutes, or until doubled in size.
- Near the end of the second prove, preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan.
- Brush the Belgian buns with some beaten egg, then bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Turn down the oven temperature to 180°C/160°C fan and bake for a further 10-15 minutes until golden and baked through. Watch the buns in the oven, and cover them with some tinfoil if they are browning too quickly.
- Leave the buns to cool on the tray for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- To make the icing, mix together the icing sugar with 2 tsp of lemon juice, adding a little more lemon juice at a time to turn into a thick, pipeable icing. Fill the icing into a small piping bag, snip off the end, and drizzle the icing over the buns in a zig-zag pattern. Decorate each bun with half a glacé cherry to finish.
