CHOCOLATE CHIP BUNS

The thought of yeast dough has always been really daunting to me. Whilst baking soda, baking powder and all chemical raising agents are relatively easy to use in baking (even though they can and do go wrong too sometimes), yeast is more of a beast to handle. Having watched thousands of episodes of The Great British Bake Off in the past couple of years, the image of Paul Hollywood scrutinising a crumb of some poor contestant’s bread loaf and going “It’s underproved, underworked and underbaked” was always stuck in my head and put me off trying to make bread myself. But it is also known that I’m a bit of a scaredy cat, so I thought: what’s the best way of starting my new blog (which is, did you know, just as frightening), other than by trying and fighting this horrible misconception about my personality (HA)! Here’s a very easy, not-so-scary sweet dough recipe that, although it requires the yeast-beast to work its magic for quite a few hours, will provide you with 18 delicious, really-easy-to-make, reasonably healthy, and vegan chocolate chip buns. And did I say delicious? These work super well for breakfast, as an afternoon snack and even dessert, or in my case, all three (hhem). 

CHOCOLATE CHIP BUNS



slightly adapted from Kitchen Bloody Kitchen

600g (5 cups) plain flour

70g (1/3 cup) stevia sugar, or same amount of regular sugar

60ml (1/4 cup) rapeseed oil or other flavourless oil

280ml (3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) rice milk or other non-dairy milk

15g (0.5oz) fresh yeast

1 teaspoon salt

125g (heaped 3/4 cup) dark chocolate chips

Dissolve the yeast in 100ml of milk, add 100g of flour and leave the mixture to rest for 20 minutes. Sieve the remaining flour in a large bowl and add the sugar, oil, the remaining milk, and the yeast mix. Knead the mixture for a couple of minutes, add the salt then continue for 15 more minutes. Transfer the dough into a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes, then place in the fridge for about 12 hours (or overnight). Take the bowl out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature for an hour. Shape the dough into a rectangle, sprinkle the surface evenly with chocolate chips then roll into a sausage. Cut into 18 pieces of about 65g each, shape them into small balls and place onto two baking trays covered with baking paper. Cover the trays with cling film and leave to prove for 2 hours. Cook them in a preheated oven at 160°C/320 F for 15-20 minutes. Leave on a cooling rack to cool and enjoy, never mind the crumb structure.