What Are Hot Cross Buns?

Hot cross buns are a type of sweet, spiced bun commonly made with currants or raisins and marked with a cross on the top. They are a cross between a basic white dinner roll and a sweet cinnamon roll, and are typically associated with Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday, in many countries. The cross on top of the bun represents the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, while the spices used in the bun symbolize the spices used to embalm him. Hot cross buns are traditionally eaten toasted with butter, and they are a popular Easter treat.

What I Love About This Recipe

This recipe does not skip on the steps that make these buns moist, flavorful, and shelf-stable. As a recipe that you are probably only going to make once a year, why not put everything into it? I use orange to compliment the fruit and spices inside the buns, a unique enhancing feature which can be eliminated if you choose. Though this dish is traditionally served toasted with butter, these rolls are a delicacy straight from the pan. 

Considerations For Enriched Doughs

Enriched doughs, like hot cross buns, contain ingredients that can make it difficult for gluten to come together. Fats (usually butter) and sugars in medium to large amounts mean it is necessary to develop the dough to a windowpane up front, in order to have the best fermentation experience. Without gluten, the dough simply cannot hold in air the same way. A dough that is not developed properly may taste flaky, like a biscuit, instead of tender or airy (as is the goal).

On a scale of 1-10, one being unenriched (like country bread) and 10 being heavily enriched (like panettone), this bread is about a “5” – it contains a medium amount of sugar and butter, but not an obnoxious amount. With any enriched dough, though, I always resort to my stand mixer for the best experience. You’ll find this dough needs 15-20 minutes of kneading to achieve a windowpane. Especially because of the addition of butter, I always find this process simpler and more efficient using my stand mixer.

Some home mixers are not built for kneading bread efficiently. Check the manual for your mixer, and be sure it is safe to endure mixing times of up to thirty minutes, just to be on the safe side. The most complicated bread in the bread-making world is panettone, which requires mixing times of up to sixty minutes. It is so very important not to overwork the dough or the motor on your mixer. I love my Ankarsrum stand mixer, which is more than capable of living up to the task of kneading even the toughest of doughs. If you do not own a mixer, it is possible to knead by hand, as long as you are willing to endure the task of kneading to a windowpane up front. You can use any preferred method, or find ideas in my video on methods of gluten development, here.

The “Why” Behind The Starter Build

Why Build A Starter (Levain) For This Recipe?

A “sour” flavor is not generally preferred for sweet breads. By building a levain, we can use a formula that helps to reduce overall sourness in the starter and in the bread. To do this, it is important to understand the starter, which consists of yeast and bacteria, and how the formula works to reduce sourness.

Sourness comes when bacteria are overpopulating in your sourdough starter, meaning they are out of balance with the yeast. This happens naturally, as bacteria reproduce faster than yeast do, especially in ideal climates. To limit sourness, it is important to favor the yeast in starter care. In this levain formula, I do just this in order to limit acidity and reduce overall sour flavor.

Stiff Starter

By giving the yeast more food (this means they can continue to eat, multiply, and produce CO2) and reducing the amount of water (bacteria favor wet climates), we can effectively reduce the amount of acidity in our starter at the same percentage of rise as a starter made with equal amounts of flour and water.

Sugar

This is one of the most important components of this levain – do not skip it! Sugar is a powerful tool. Added in low amounts, it feeds the yeast and speeds up fermentation. Added in high amounts, it dehydrates yeast cells and potentially stops fermentation altogether. Added in just the right amount, the yeast still thrive, but the bacteria suffer. 10-15% sugar in a recipe or levain creates something called “osmotic stress.” This stress to the bacteria limits their ability to reproduce, which limits acid buildup, thereby limiting overall sourness coming from the starter.

Temperature

In order to favor the yeast, I aim to keep this levain between 70-75 F (21-24 C) and use it when it has approximately doubled in size. Yeast produce most abundantly in these temperatures, while the bacteria in your starter (there are two types – lactic and acetic) favor temperatures both higher and lower than this. This specific temperature helps provide balance to the starter, which translates to how efficiently the starter ferments the bread and how mild the overall sour flavor is.

Optional Kneading

Have you ever heard of developing gluten in your starter? While it is not essential, kneading this starter for just a few minutes will help trap air, introducing oxygen and stimulating yeast growth. It also provides structure (by creating a slightly more elastic gluten network), which helps the levain rise and maintain peak more efficiently. 

The “Why” Behind The Dough and Process

Tangzhong

The thing about hot cross buns is that they are best enjoyed fresh from the oven, typically stale by the next day (if not a few hours later). For this reason, I knew I had to include a tangzhong!

Tangzhong is an Asian technique: the trick to making, and keeping, the interior of bread moist, soft, and plush. Without it, the bread would only taste its best right out of the oven, and would be dry after just twenty-four hours. Tangzhong aids in moisture retention, which is where all the benefits come in. 

Because we have taken the time to add the tangzhong, you can make these rolls in advance without worry. I promise you won’t regret taking the extra time for this! Read more about tangzhong here.

Milk Mixture

This is a technique that stems from the beginning of my bread journey, when I first started making bread doughs using commercial yeast. I have kept this technique for a long time. Recently, though, I have started to change this technique, moving away from heating my milk, butter, and sugar on the stovetop. This is because a well-kneaded enriched dough gains extra heat through friction during mixing; therefore, heating the ingredients is not necessary (and could even bring too much warmth to the dough, depending on your mixer). Despite this, let me tell you my previous reasoning as to why I created a “milk mixture” in this recipe:

By heating the liquid in the recipe with the sugar and the butter, we are able to simultaneously: a) create warmth that gets the yeast moving quicker, b) fully dissolve the sugar, and c) warm the butter without having to remember to soften a stick beforehand. There is not enough butter in this recipe to create greasy dough, as is the case with brioche, so melting (or, partially melting) it is definitely okay.

Let’s talk about the specific ingredients more in-depth:

Milk

Milk is a tightening agent in bread, meaning it makes the gluten network stiffer and stronger, often increasing the time the dough ferments. This is because it takes twice the air to blow up a stiff balloon (our gluten network). However, it also adds a really good flavor and texture to sweet breads. It makes the bread denser, softer, and creamier. It also helps the bread darken in the oven. For these reasons, I love to use milk in my sweet recipes.

Brown Sugar

This recipe contains a medium amount of sugar, roughly 24%. I definitely had to increase the percentage of starter in this recipe in order to accommodate this sweet bun. This amount of sugar works to sweeten; however, it also has other effects -creating osmotic stress, which helps to reduce sourness, and pulling necessary moisture from the dough (which I have also accounted for in this recipe).

Butter

Butter is a tenderizer; it makes the dough fragile and soft. The amount of butter here is about 17% of the total weight of the flour, small enough to not interfere with the gluten network (too much), but large enough to help keep the bread soft during baking.

Bread Flour

Bread flour increases the strength (elasticity) of the gluten network, which is helpful for enriched doughs containing butter and sugar (ingredients that can interfere with gluten). Bread flour also helps the dough come together more efficiently when kneading, reducing the total amount of necessary mixing time. While I used to make this recipe with a blend of all-purpose flour and bread flour, I now use bread flour only, just for the incredible way it holds the dough together. I use King Arthur Bread Flour, protein content about 12.7%, in any recipe that calls for bread flour (unless otherwise noted).

Salt

Salt helps bring out flavor (without salt, bread would taste almost like nothing), but also has notable effects on the dough. Salt is a tightening agent, meaning it, in addition to milk, helps create a more elastic (strong) dough. It does slow fermentation, as well as gluten development, but these are things we must account for in the recipe because we cannot have a recipe without salt. It is important to use just the right amount, enough to bring out the flavor, but not so much that the loaf cannot ferment or come together. I use the standard – 2% salt – in all my recipes, unless otherwise noted.

Spices

The spices in this recipe are a personal blend of choice, and can be adjusted based on your personal preference, as well as what you currently have in your spice cabinet. The purpose of the spices is that of history and tradition: to represent the spices used to embalm Jesus. Cinnamon is the main spice here, but take care not to add more than I have directed in the recipe (a teaspoon). Cinnamon is a tightening agent, meaning it creates a more elastic dough, which slows fermentation. Too much cinnamon, and it is possible to nearly halt fermentation altogether. I talk a little bit more about this topic on my blog post about gluten, which you can find here.

Orange

I added orange (zest, extract [in the cross], and juice [in the glaze]) to compliment the fruit and spice blend. It’s a flavoring pair of choice; it does not have a significant effect on the dough. All of the orange can be eliminated if you choose; however, it is, most certainly, a fun compliment to this recipe.

Eggs

Eggs add moisture and fat to the dough, contributing to a tender texture. They help prevent the buns from becoming too dry, which is particularly important given the enriched nature of the dough. They also act as a binding agent, holding the dough together and providing structure. The proteins in eggs coagulate during baking, helping the buns hold their shape while maintaining a soft crumb.

Furthermore, eggs incorporate air during mixing, which contributes a better fermentation, creating a lighter and fluffier texture. Last, eggs enrich the dough, adding a subtle richness that complements the sweetness of the buns. This is particularly noticeable in the soft, slightly custard-like crumb typical of hot cross buns.

Fruit

While the spices in hot cross buns are meant to represent the spices used to embalm Jesus, the fruit is meant to symbolize the sweetness of resurrection and life. Raisins or currants, specifically, are the most common addition to hot cross buns. In this recipe, I leave the fruit open to choice, as any combination of dried fruit will come out wonderfully. Alternatively, you could replace the fruit with chocolate chips for a fun twist. 

Mixing

Because butter and sugar can interfere with gluten’s natural ability to come together over time, it is preferable to knead this dough to complete development up front. That’s why I choose to use a stand mixer – because the process for this can be kind of enduring by hand (though it is possible). Using a stand mixer ensures a perfectly and effectively built dough with minimum effort on the baker’s part. Watch this video for all the ways to develop gluten in your bread.

I want to be more specific in this updated post about how to develop the dough properly in the stand mixer than I was when I originally published this recipe. This way, you can be successful mixing this dough using any stand mixer, or even by hand.

The ultimate goal: to knead this dough to a complete windowpane. When you pull up on a section of dough, it should not tear. You should be able to stretch the dough to a point where you can see through it before it breaks. The dough will show other signs of being ready, too, such as clinging to itself or forming a ball around the dough hook. If you have a KitchenAid or similar mixer, the stand mixer may start to “jump” when the dough builds sufficient strength.

The first step to achieving this is to mix the dough on a low to medium-low speed until the ingredients are fully combined and the mixture forms one cohesive mass of dough. This step simply brings our dough together and hydrates the proteins in the flour before the speed is increased and the focus shifts from combining ingredients to forming gluten. Too fast a speed during this initial mix can start to organize gluten that is barely created, negatively impacting the development of the dough.

Next, we increase the speed and knead the dough forms a windowpane. The speed you choose is up to you and what your mixer (and dough) can handle. The basic guidelines are this:

• A lower speed will take longer, while a higher speed will knead the dough much faster.
• A lower speed will keep the dough elastic (strong, not stretchy), while a higher speed will create extensibility (stretchiness).
• The dough temperature should not exceed 78 F (26 C).
• Use the guidelines from your mixer to determine what it is able to handle.

It can be helpful to add certain ingredients later in the mixing process, after gluten has already started to come together. Adding ingredients in chunks can help reduce overall mixing time and keep the dough temperature below 78 F (26 C).

To do this, skip the milk mixture and just use cold milk, granulated sugar, and softened (room temperature) butter. Add the milk in the beginning with the rest of the ingredients, but hold the sugar and butter. Mix the dough until you can pull up on it without it tearing. Then, slowly drizzle in the sugar until dissolved. Last, incorporate the butter, one tablespoon at a time, then continue mixing until your dough has formed a windowpane.

Bulk Fermentation

Letting the dough rise as much as possible, but not too much, contributes to the airiest of loaves. In an attempt to favor the yeast and reduce sourness, I recommend keeping the dough temperature between 70-75 F (21-24 C). Watch the dough and ferment until it doubles in size (at least; about ten to twelve hours). If you developed the dough well in the stand mixer, you can let it triple in size before shaping. Though I favor an overnight method for this dough, use your knowledge of your environment to bulk ferment this dough appropriately.

Shaping

Rolls are one of the easiest to shape – just divide them and shape them into rounds by tucking all the ends underneath, then cupping your hand over the top and moving it in a circular motion really fast to smooth out the top.

The Cross

For this recipe, I went for a cross made of a flour and water that is piped onto the buns before baking. The reason? First, to keep tradition. Second, to be able to enjoy the buns warm! The other option would be a cross made from an icing glaze, which would require the buns to cool completely before application.

Baking

I use a combination of temperatures for this bread. 400 F (205 C) helps these rolls get their best oven spring, while 350 F (175 C) helps them finish cooking all the way through without over-browning. A final internal temperature of 185 F (85 C) cooks these rolls until they are just done, retaining some of the moisture and leaving you with the softest and fluffiest end result. 

The Glaze

The final touch and perfect garnish. The glaze gives the rolls a shiny top, hint of sweetness, and (if using) increased orange flavor to the rolls. Though you don’t have to have it, I wouldn’t skip it. Be sure to brush the glaze on while the rolls are very hot, otherwise the mixture will apply more like icing than a glaze. 

Suggested Timelines

Overnight Timeline

Refrigeration Timeline

Quick Tip: Read the recipe in its entirety before you start cooking. This will help you understand the ingredients, steps, and timing involved, and allow you to prepare any necessary equipment or ingredients beforehand.

This is the sweet bread roll you’ve been looking for. It’s the ultimate Hawaiian roll recipe, sweetened and enriched with pineapple juice, sugar, and butter. Made with careful attention to technique, sweet stiff starter and tangzhong help keep these rolls soft and free from a sour flavor. Once you try one, you may never go back.

What Are Hawaiian Rolls?

Hawaiian Rolls are a type of sweet bread roll that originated in the United States, inspired by Portuguese sweet bread and made popular in Hawaii. The most popular Hawaiian roll is “King’s Hawaiian.” They are characterized by their sweet flavor, soft and fluffy texture, and golden brown exterior. Hawaiian rolls compliment both sweet and savory dishes, and are commonly served as dinner rolls or sliders.

Considerations For Enriched Doughs

Enriched doughs, like Hawaiian rolls, contain ingredients that can make it difficult for gluten to come together. Fats (usually butter) and sugars in medium to large amounts mean it is necessary to develop the dough to a windowpane up front, in order to have the best fermentation experience. Without gluten, the dough simply cannot hold in air the same way. A dough that is not developed properly may taste flaky, like a biscuit, instead of tender or airy (as is the goal).

On a scale of 1-10, one being unenriched (like country bread) and 10 being heavily enriched (like panettone), this bread is about an “8” – it contains a high amount of sugar and medium amount of butter. With any enriched dough, I always resort to my stand mixer for the best experience. You’ll find this dough needs at least 20 minutes of kneading to achieve a windowpane. Especially because of the addition of butter, which coats proteins, making it difficult for gluten to bind, I always find this process simpler and more efficient using my stand mixer.

Some home mixers are not built for kneading bread efficiently. Check the manual for your mixer, and be sure it is safe to endure mixing times of up to thirty to forty minutes, just to be on the safe side. The most complicated bread in the bread-making world is panettone, which requires mixing times of up to sixty minutes. It is so very important not to overwork the dough or the motor on your mixer. I love my Ankarsrum stand mixer, which is more than capable of living up to the task of kneading even the toughest of doughs. If you do not own a mixer, it is possible to knead by hand, as long as you are willing to endure the task of kneading to a windowpane up front. You can use any preferred method, or find ideas in my video on methods of gluten development, here.

The “Why” Behind The Starter Build

Why Build A Starter (Levain) For This Recipe?

A “sour” flavor is not generally preferred for sweet breads. By building a levain, we can use a formula that helps to reduce overall sourness in the starter and in the bread. To do this, it is important to understand the starter, which consists of yeast and bacteria, and how the formula works to reduce sourness.

Sourness comes when bacteria are overpopulating in your sourdough starter, meaning they are out of balance with the yeast. This happens naturally, as bacteria reproduce faster than yeast do, especially in ideal climates. To limit sourness, it is important to favor the yeast in starter care. In this levain formula, I do just this in order to limit acidity and reduce overall sour flavor.

Stiff Starter

By giving the yeast more food (this means they can continue to eat, multiply, and produce CO2) and reducing the amount of water (bacteria favor wet climates), we can effectively reduce the amount of acidity in our starter at the same percentage of rise as a starter made with equal amounts of flour and water.

Sugar

This is one of the most important components of this levain – do not skip it! Sugar is a powerful tool. Added in low amounts, it feeds the yeast and speeds up fermentation. Added in high amounts, it dehydrates yeast cells and potentially stops fermentation altogether. Added in just the right amount, the yeast still thrive, but the bacteria suffer. 10-15% sugar in a recipe or levain creates something called “osmotic stress.” This stress to the bacteria limits their ability to reproduce, which limits acid buildup, thereby limiting overall sourness coming from the starter.

Temperature

In order to favor the yeast, I aim to keep this levain between 70-75 F (21-24 C) and use it when it has approximately doubled in size. Yeast produce most abundantly in these temperatures, while the bacteria in your starter (there are two types – lactic and acetic) favor temperatures both higher and lower than this. This specific temperature helps provide balance to the starter, which translates to how efficiently the starter ferments the bread and how mild the overall sour flavor is.

Optional Kneading

Have you ever heard of developing gluten in your starter? While it is not essential, kneading this starter for just a few minutes will help trap air, introducing oxygen and stimulating yeast growth. It also provides structure (by creating a slightly more elastic gluten network), which helps the levain rise and maintain peak more efficiently. 

The “Why” Behind The Dough and Process

Lots Of Starter

This recipe makes a very large starter build. That’s because this recipe has a lot of sugar in it (an entire, 6 oz, can of pineapple juice + a whole cup of added sugar). Sugar steals moisture from the dough and suffocates yeast cells, meaning that fermentation just won’t happen without an army of starter.

There are other ways to navigate this problem; however, for this recipe I am assuming that you haven’t trained osmotolerant yeast. Using a heavy amount of sweet stiff starter is the simplest, go-to route to making this recipe immediately.

Tangzhong

Tangzhong is magical, and provides impressive fluff and moisture retention to your bread dough, qualities that can only be achieved through similar techniques (such as yudane or brühstück). It pairs perfectly with soft and fluffy breads, like dinner rolls. Hawaiian rolls are no different.

For this tangzhong, I’ve used pineapple juice as the liquid, as opposed to water or milk. I’d never heard of anyone doing this, so I had to give it a try. Let’s just say it turned out so great that I decided to keep the technique. While you can make tangzhong with any liquid, pineapple juice is a signature ingredient in Hawaiian rolls, and it made the most sense to put it here.

Milk Mixture

This is a technique that stems from the beginning of my bread journey, when I first started making bread doughs using commercial yeast. I have kept this technique for a long time. Recently, though, I have started to change this technique, moving away from heating my milk, butter, and sugar on the stovetop. This is because a well-kneaded enriched dough gains extra heat through friction during mixing; therefore, heating the ingredients is not necessary (and could even bring too much warmth to the dough, depending on your mixer). Despite this, let me tell you my previous reasoning as to why I created a “milk mixture” in this recipe:

By heating the liquid in the recipe with the sugar and the butter, we are able to simultaneously: a) create warmth that gets the yeast moving quicker, b) fully dissolve the sugar, and c) warm the butter without having to remember to soften a stick beforehand. There is not enough butter in this recipe to create greasy dough, as is the case with brioche, so melting (or, partially melting) it is definitely okay.

Let’s talk about the specific ingredients more in-depth:

Milk

Milk is a tightening agent in bread, meaning it makes the gluten network stiffer and stronger, often increasing the time the dough ferments. This is because it takes twice the air to blow up a stiff balloon (our gluten network). However, it also adds a really good flavor and texture to sweet breads. It makes the bread denser, softer, and creamier. It also helps the bread darken in the oven. For these reasons, I love to use milk in my sweet recipes. The milk in this recipe is balanced with the pineapple juice from the tangzhong, which is counters the density from the milk.

Sugar

This recipe contains a lot of sugar, approximately 36%! (That doesn’t include the natural sugars from the pineapple juice.) This amount of sugar is intended to sweeten the dough, although it has consequences. Sugar in this amount not only strains bacteria, it also strains yeast by sucking away at moisture (one of the reasons why this needs to be a fairly wet dough at the start). It also affects the ability of gluten to come together, along with the butter, making mixing this dough to a windowpane up front a must.

Butter

Butter is a tenderizer; it makes the dough fragile and soft. The amount of butter here is about 17% of the total weight of the flour. It does interfere with the gluten network some, but by mixing to a windowpane, all will be well.

Bread Flour

Bread flour increases the strength (elasticity) of the gluten network, which is helpful for enriched doughs containing lots of butter and sugar (like this one). Bread flour also helps the dough come together more efficiently when kneading, reducing the total amount of necessary mixing time. While I used to make this recipe with a blend of all-purpose flour and bread flour, I now use bread flour only, just for the incredible way it holds the dough together. I use King Arthur Bread Flour, protein content about 12.7%, in any recipe that calls for bread flour (unless otherwise noted).

Salt

Salt helps bring out flavor (without salt, bread would taste almost like nothing), but also has notable effects on the dough. Salt is a tightening agent, meaning it, in addition to milk, helps create a more elastic (strong) dough. It does slow fermentation, as well as gluten development, but these are things we must account for in the recipe because we cannot have a recipe without salt. It is important to use just the right amount, enough to bring out the flavor, but not so much that the loaf cannot ferment or come together. I use the standard – 2% salt – in all my recipes, unless otherwise noted.

Egg Yolks

Egg yolks are another source of fat that adds richness and a little bit of moisture to the dough.

Mixing

Because butter and sugar can interfere with gluten’s natural ability to come together over time, it is preferable to knead this dough to complete development up front. That’s why I choose to use a stand mixer – because the process for this can be kind of enduring by hand (though it is possible). Using a stand mixer ensures a perfectly and effectively built dough with minimum effort on the baker’s part. Watch this video for all the ways to develop gluten in your bread.

I want to be more specific in this updated post about how to develop the dough properly in the stand mixer than I was when I originally published this recipe. This way, you can be successful mixing this dough using any stand mixer, or even by hand.

The ultimate goal: to knead this dough to a windowpane before letting it rest. When you pull up on a section of dough, it should not tear. You should be able to stretch the dough to a point where you can see through it before it breaks. The dough will show other signs of being ready, too, such as clinging to itself or forming a ball around the dough hook. If you have a KitchenAid or similar mixer, the stand mixer may start to “jump” when the dough builds sufficient strength.

The first step to achieving this is to mix the dough on a low to medium-low speed until the ingredients are fully combined and the mixture forms one cohesive mass of dough. This step simply brings our dough together and hydrates the proteins in the flour before the speed is increased and the focus shifts from combining ingredients to forming gluten. Too fast a speed during this initial mix can start to organize gluten that is barely created, negatively impacting the development of the dough.

Next, we increase the speed and knead the dough forms a windowpane. The speed you choose is up to you and what your mixer (and dough) can handle. The basic guidelines are this:

• A lower speed will take longer, while a higher speed will knead the dough much faster.
• A lower speed will keep the dough elastic (strong, not stretchy), while a higher speed will create extensibility (stretchiness).
• The dough temperature should not exceed 78 F (26 C).
• Use the guidelines from your mixer to determine what it is able to handle.

This dough in particular has a lot of enrichments. It can be helpful to add certain ingredients later in the mixing process, after gluten has already started to come together. Adding ingredients in chunks can help reduce overall mixing time and keep the dough temperature below 78 F (26 C).

To do this, skip the milk mixture and just use cold milk, granulated sugar, and softened (room temperature) butter. Add the milk in the beginning with the rest of the ingredients, but hold the sugar and butter. Mix the dough until you can pull up on it without it tearing. Then, slowly drizzle in the sugar until dissolved. Last, incorporate the butter, one tablespoon at a time, then continue mixing until your dough has formed a windowpane.

Bulk Fermentation

Letting the dough rise as much as possible, but not too much, contributes to the airiest of loaves. This dough is a slow riser; therefore, I recommend keeping it in a warm environment (around 75 F, 24 C). Watch the dough and ferment until it doubles in size (at least; eight to twelve hours). It should fill a 3.75 qt bowl completely.

If your dough is not rising as it should in twelve hours, there is a problem. It’s likely either a starter issue or a dough that is too elastic from mixing.

Shaping

Rolls are one of the easiest to shape – just divide them and shape them into rounds by tucking all the ends underneath, then cupping your hand over the top and moving it in a circular motion really fast to smooth out the top.

These rolls can be a little bit difficult to handle due to the wet dough + enrichments. Working with a cold dough or lightly oiled hands can be helpful.

Egg Wash

An egg wash helps give the rolls their beautiful brown color. I’ve found the rolls can be colorless without it. However, since this dough contains a hefty portion of sugar, they will brown on their own if they are well-fermented and baked at a high enough temperature for longer.

Baking

I use a combination of temperatures for this bread. 400 F (205 C) helps these rolls get their best oven spring, while 350 F (175 C) helps them finish cooking all the way through without over-browning. A final internal temperature of 185 F (85 C) cooks these rolls until they are just done, retaining some of the moisture and leaving you with the softest and fluffiest end result. 

Suggested Timelines

Overnight Timeline

Refrigeration Timeline

Quick Tip: Read the recipe in its entirety before you start cooking. This will help you understand the ingredients, steps, and timing involved, and allow you to prepare any necessary equipment or ingredients beforehand.

Dense and soft with a perfectly crunchy topping, Dutch crunch bread is the perfect alternative to country bread. If you’re not a fan of the chewy interior and crispy exterior of artisanal bread, meet its opposite: the soft and tender sandwich bread with a delicate, crunchy topping.

What Is Dutch Crunch Bread?

Dutch crunch bread is a dense and soft white bread with a delightful crunchy topping made from rice flour, sugar, yeast, and sesame oil. This incredibly popular, but also very controversial, sandwich bread is well known in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. The texture of the bread is soft and plush, similar to that of a white sandwich bread. The crunchy topping adds the perfect contrast to the interior of the bread and makes a flawless compliment to most sandwich recipes.

A Bread With Many Names

Dutch crunch bread originated in the Netherlands, where it is known as “tijerbrood” (tiger bread) because its crackly topping resembles the stripes of a tiger. In the UK, a three-year-old girl wrote to the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, suggesting that the name “tiger bread” be changed to “giraffe bread” because the pattern resembled a giraffe more than a tiger. This bread eventually made its way to the United States, where it became popular in the San Francisco Bay Area (though nearly unknown everywhere else) and is known as “Dutch crunch bread.” Wegmans Food Markets of New York markets this bread under the name “Marco Polo bread.”

What I Love About This Recipe

As someone who bakes sourdough, I compare this bread to rustic-style artisan bread quite often. An artisan boule has a chewy interior with a crispy outer crust. For some, the chewy interior is not their preference, and the crispy crust makes for a difficult bite. The interior of Dutch crunch bread is similar to a plush white sandwich bread. It is softer, denser, and not at all chewy, a style that may be preferable for some. A crispy crust is still present, but in a lighter, more gentle form. The process of making Dutch crunch bread is much more beginner-friendly than that of a rustic loaf, as the bread itself is lower in hydration, meaning it requires different handling practices that some find easier to work with.

My Little Secret

This sourdough take on Dutch crunch bread is unlike any other recipe you will find on the internet. After thoroughly researching the bread and reviewing nearly every already-published recipe, I set out to make this bread as described, “soft, moist, flavorful, fluffy, and dense, with a pillowy interior.” The problem? I never liked my end result, feeling it never truly fit the description. I played with numerous ingredient combinations and proportions, varied the liquids, changed the hydration, and shaped it a million different ways. Nothing was giving me the results I wanted.

That is, until I relented and added this Asian technique called “tangzhong” to the dough. There are numerous ways to achieve the same effect, but essentially by precooking a portion of the flour, the dough is able to retain moisture almost by double. The end result is a bread that is beautifully soft, pillowy, and moist by ten thousand times over.

All The “Why’s”

Tangzhong

This Asian technique is the trick to making, and keeping, the interior of this bread soft and plush. Without it, the bread would only taste its best right out of the oven, and would be dry after just twenty-four hours. Tangzhong aids in moisture retention, which is where all the benefits come in. Read more about tangzhong here.

Milk

Milk adds softness, density, and a subtle creamy flavor. It balances well with the water from the tangzhong, which creates a lightness in the bread.

Honey

This recipe contains about 10% honey, which is the perfect percentage to create osmotic stress, especially paired with the stiffness of this dough. If you don’t know what osmotic stress is, it’s when the bacteria in your starter (they produce acids that result in a sour flavor) are suffocated, in a sense. It helps to reduce sourness. The honey also works to sweeten the bread, but only a bit. Really, the honey just helps create a neutral flavored (not sour) bread. This is not a sweet bread.

Honey can be substituted with most other natural sweeteners – granulated sugar, molasses, maple syrup, brown sugar. I have not tested this recipe with sugar substitutes.

Butter

Butter (any kind of fat, really) is a tenderizer; it makes the dough fragile and soft. In this recipe, I only use a small amount, which is meant to keep the bread soft in the oven and after baking – so important for a bread like this one! You can use all butter, or replace part or all of the butter with sesame oil for a subtle, nutty flavor.

Bread Flour

Bread flour absorbs more moisture, so you’ll find that if you substitute this ingredient with all-purpose flour, the dough will be wetter and you may need to add more flour. I prefer bread flour in my stiff doughs because of its higher protein content, which helps the gluten bind. This is especially important in stiff doughs because the lack of water makes it more difficult for gluten to come together. Without gluten, the dough will not be able to trap air, and it will not rise properly. I use King Arthur Bread Flour, protein content about 12.7%, in any recipe that calls for bread flour (unless otherwise noted).

Salt

Salt helps bring out flavor (without salt, bread would taste almost like nothing), but also has notable effects on the dough. Salt is a tightening agent, meaning it helps create a more elastic (strong) dough. It does slow fermentation, as well as gluten development, but these are things we must account for in the recipe because we cannot have a recipe without salt. It is important to use just the right amount, enough to bring out the flavor, but not so much that the loaf cannot ferment or come together. I use the standard – 2% salt – in all my recipes, unless otherwise noted.

Low Hydration

The term “low hydration” simply means this is not a wet and sticky dough; it does not include as much moisture as other recipes. The approximate hydration is 63%. At this hydration, you’ll find the dough is soft, smooth, and firm (but still pliable). It may be slightly sticky but should not stick to the bowl of the stand mixer when kneading.

This consistency of dough contributes to a lot of the signature traits of Dutch crunch bread. For one, it allows the dough to hold its shape without help, which is needed in order to apply the crunchy topping. It also contributes to a finer crumb and a softer, more tender texture (perfect for a sandwich bread).

The low hydration of the dough also has one other bonus – reduced sourness. Stiff doughs (and starters, for that matter) do not encourage the reproduction of bacteria that release acids resulting in a sour flavor. In other words, the dough’s consistency works together with the small percentage of sugar (honey, in this case) to really hinder acid production, giving the bread a neutral flavor.

Mixing

For this recipe, we just need the dough to form a gluten network. This can be a difficult task in stiff doughs due to the lack of water (which makes it harder for gluten to form). Without enough gluten-binding proteins, the dough may struggle to form a gluten window, which allows opportunity for air to escape. This decreases the dough’s ability to rise to its fullest potential, resulting in a denser crumb and texture. Gluten must be developed through kneading and time; the more help it can get, the better. Using a flour with a high protein content can be helpful. Ten to twelve minutes in a stand mixer or by hand should do, and if your flour is good, time will do the rest. Follow your stand mixer’s directions for a stiff dough, generally a low speed is all you need, and you will be on your way! This recipe does not require any folds.

Bulk Fermentation

Letting the dough rise as much as possible, but not too much, contributes to the airiest of loaves. In an attempt to favor the yeast and reduce sourness, I recommend keeping the dough temperature between 70-75 F (21-24 C). Watch the dough and ferment until it doubles in size (at least; eight to twelve hours). Then, you can shape it and let it double again. Though I favor an overnight method for this dough, use your knowledge of your environment to bulk ferment this dough appropriately.

Shaping

Traditionally, this dough is shaped into hoagies or buns. This shaping method is perfect for sub sandwiches or burgers where you want a bit of the crispy topping in every bite. However, I usually choose to shape this dough into two mini-loaves, which make the perfect slices for toast. That’s the shaping method you’ll find in this recipe. To do this, I first pre-shape the dough into rounds. This step is necessary for this stiff dough, in order to get a solid and even final shape. Then, I use my baguette shaping technique to elongate the stiff rounds into a batard shape.

The Crunchy Topping

Rice flour is a must here! This topping is made out of rice flour and instant yeast. It rises with the dough on the final proof before being baked in the oven. Since rice flour is gluten-free, it will crack (it does not form gluten), giving you a pattern that looks like the spots on a giraffe or the stripes on a tiger.

I’ve been asked before why instant yeast is important in the topping. This is, after all, a sourdough recipe – why can’t we just use that?

If you keep a gluten-free starter, you could make a topping with your starter. However, the majority of us sourdough bakers keep a starter made of flour and water. The flour is an absolute no-go in the topping. We cannot have it. It makes more sense just to use the instant yeast to get the effect we want.

The topping isn’t just comprised of water, rice flour, and instant yeast, though. It also includes other important ingredients. Salt enhances the flavor, sugar helps it brown in the oven, and oil adds flavor and helps with the “crunch.”

One fun thing about this topping is that you control how it looks based on how you proof it. The longer the rest period, the darker and more defined the cracks in the topping become. Use this knowledge to your advantage when reflecting on the outcome of your final bake.

Baking Method

We need a compromise of high and low temperatures for this bread. A high temperature browns the topping appropriately in the allotted time for baking. A low temperature keeps the bread from burning – it is a milk-based bread, after all. 400 F (205 C) is my perfect middle, and steam isn’t even necessary to get a great expansion.

Suggested Timeline

Suggested Timeline

Quick Tip: Read the recipe in its entirety before you start cooking. This will help you understand the ingredients, steps, and timing involved, and allow you to prepare any necessary equipment or ingredients beforehand.

Sometimes, I have to move away from the chocolate and pull out the citrus. Pair delicate citrus flavors with warm, fluffy layers of pull-apart bread and the subtle crunch of poppy seeds – oh my! This enriched, sweet bread is a joyful twist on classic lemon poppyseed flavors, perfect for breakfast or brunch gatherings, or simply as a treat to brighten your day.

What Is Pull-Apart Bread?

Pull-apart bread is a type of bread divided into separate, small pieces, which are then assembled in a baking dish. During the final proof and bake, the pieces rise and fuse together, but remain distinct enough to easily be pulled apart by hand or with utensils. The pieces are usually coated in butter paired with a sweet or savory flavor combination, which aids in the pull-apart factor.

Considerations For Enriched Doughs

Enriched doughs, like this pull-apart bread, contain ingredients that can make it difficult for gluten to come together. Fats (usually butter) and sugars in medium to large amounts mean it is necessary to develop the dough to a windowpane up front, in order to have the best fermentation experience. Without gluten, the dough simply cannot hold in air the same way. A dough that is not developed properly may taste flaky, like a biscuit, instead of tender or airy (as is the goal).

On a scale of 1-10, one being unenriched (like country bread) and 10 being heavily enriched (like panettone), this bread is about a “5” – it contains a medium amount of sugar and butter, but not an obnoxious amount. With any enriched dough, though, I always resort to my stand mixer for the best experience. You’ll find this dough needs 15-20 minutes of kneading to achieve a windowpane. Especially because of the addition of butter, I always find this process simpler and more efficient using my stand mixer.

Some home mixers are not built for kneading bread efficiently. Check the manual for your mixer, and be sure it is safe to endure mixing times of up to thirty minutes, just to be on the safe side. The most complicated bread in the bread-making world is panettone, which requires mixing times of up to sixty minutes. It is so very important not to overwork the dough or the motor on your mixer. I love my Ankarsrum stand mixer, which is more than capable of living up to the task of kneading even the toughest of doughs. If you do not own a mixer, it is possible to knead by hand, as long as you are willing to endure the task of kneading to a windowpane up front. You can use any preferred method, or find ideas in my video on methods of gluten development, here.

The “Why” Behind The Starter Build

Why Build A Starter (Levain) For This Recipe?

A “sour” flavor is not generally preferred for sweet breads. By building a levain, we can use a formula that helps to reduce overall sourness in the starter and in the bread. To do this, it is important to understand the starter, which consists of yeast and bacteria, and how the formula works to reduce sourness.

Sourness comes when bacteria are overpopulating in your sourdough starter, meaning they are out of balance with the yeast. This happens naturally, as bacteria reproduce faster than yeast do, especially in ideal climates. To limit sourness, it is important to favor the yeast in starter care. In this levain formula, I do just this in order to limit acidity and reduce overall sour flavor.

Stiff Starter

By giving the yeast more food (this means they can continue to eat, multiply, and produce CO2) and reducing the amount of water (bacteria favor wet climates), we can effectively reduce the amount of acidity in our starter at the same percentage of rise as a starter made with equal amounts of flour and water.

Sugar

This is one of the most important components of this levain – do not skip it! Sugar is a powerful tool. Added in low amounts, it feeds the yeast and speeds up fermentation. Added in high amounts, it dehydrates yeast cells and potentially stops fermentation altogether. Added in just the right amount, the yeast still thrive, but the bacteria suffer. 10-15% sugar in a recipe or levain creates something called “osmotic stress.” This stress to the bacteria limits their ability to reproduce, which limits acid buildup, thereby limiting overall sourness coming from the starter.

Temperature

In order to favor the yeast, I aim to keep this levain between 70-75 F (21-24 C) and use it when it has approximately doubled in size. Yeast produce most abundantly in these temperatures, while the bacteria in your starter (there are two types – lactic and acetic) favor temperatures both higher and lower than this. This specific temperature helps provide balance to the starter, which translates to how efficiently the starter ferments the bread and how mild the overall sour flavor is.

Optional Kneading

Have you ever heard of developing gluten in your starter? While it is not essential, kneading this starter for just a few minutes will help trap air, introducing oxygen and stimulating yeast growth. It also provides structure (by creating a slightly more elastic gluten network), which helps the levain rise and maintain peak more efficiently. 

The “Why” Behind The Dough and Process

Tangzhong

Since I chose not to use a tangzhong in my cinnamon roll recipe, which this recipe is based off of, I figured excluding one here would be okay. Oh man, did I prove myself wrong. Tangzhong is magical, and provides impressive fluff and moisture retention to the dough, qualities that can only be achieved through similar techniques (such as yudane or brühstück). This pull-apart bread is not quite as butter-saturated as some of my other enriched doughs, namely brioche and cinnamon rolls, which seems to leave an opening for tangzhong to provide a needed final touch. Learn more about tangzhong here.

While tangzhong is magical, sometimes it is an extra step that we just do not have time for. Do not fear! If you desire to skip the tangzhong in this recipe, I provide the alternative milk and flour measurements at the end of the recipe card.

Buttermilk Mixture

This is a technique that stems from the beginning of my bread journey, when I first started making bread doughs using commercial yeast. I have kept this technique for a long time. Recently, though, I have started to change this technique, moving away from heating my milk, butter, and sugar on the stovetop. This is because a well-kneaded enriched dough gains extra heat through friction during mixing; therefore, heating the ingredients is not necessary (and could even bring too much warmth to the dough, depending on your mixer). Despite this, let me tell you my previous reasoning as to why I created a “buttermilk mixture” in this recipe:

First is a caution: buttermilk curdles easily. Be sure to stir consistently if you use this technique and keep your heat rising at a slow pace. You can also use milk in place of buttermilk.

By heating the liquid in the recipe with the sugar and the butter, we are able to simultaneously: a) create warmth that gets the yeast moving quicker, b) fully dissolve the sugar, and c) warm the butter without having to remember to soften a stick beforehand. There is not enough butter in this recipe to create greasy dough, as is the case with brioche, so melting (or, partially melting) it is definitely okay.

Let’s talk about the specific ingredients more in-depth:

Buttermilk

The truth is, I only discovered buttermilk by accident as I had extra leftover from my long-fermented corn muffin recipe. In all technicality, this ingredient is optional and can be replaced with milk instead. It’s acidic, but I do not find it produces a gross sour flavor. The acidity of the buttermilk, in my opinion, only enhances the acidic flavor being brought to this dish through the lemon. There is not any actual lemon in the dough, and if I had chosen to use a milk + lemon combination instead of buttermilk, it would have the same effect. Altogether, this addition brings complex and fun flavors, but is completely optional.

Sugar

This recipe contains approximately 16% sugar (speaking for the dough only). This is slightly more than just the 10-15% of sugar that is sometimes added to bread to create osmotic stress, meaning I did have to increase the percentage of starter to help this recipe ferment more efficiently. It also means the sugar does work to sweeten the dough (just a bit), while also reducing overall sourness.

Butter

Butter is a tenderizer; it makes the dough fragile and soft. The amount of butter here is about 14% of the total weight of the flour, small enough to not interfere with the gluten network (too much), but large enough to help keep the bread soft during baking.

Bread Flour

Bread flour increases the strength (elasticity) of the gluten network, which is helpful for enriched doughs containing butter and sugar (ingredients that can interfere with gluten). Bread flour also helps the dough come together more efficiently when kneading, reducing the total amount of necessary mixing time. While I used to make this recipe with a blend of all-purpose flour and bread flour, I now use bread flour only, just for the incredible way it holds the dough together. I use King Arthur Bread Flour, protein content about 12.7%, in any recipe that calls for bread flour (unless otherwise noted).

Salt

Salt helps bring out flavor (without salt, bread would taste almost like nothing), but also has notable effects on the dough. Salt is a tightening agent, meaning it, in addition to milk, helps create a more elastic (strong) dough. It does slow fermentation, as well as gluten development, but these are things we must account for in the recipe because we cannot have a recipe without salt. It is important to use just the right amount, enough to bring out the flavor, but not so much that the loaf cannot ferment or come together. I use the standard – 2% salt – in all my recipes, unless otherwise noted.

Mixing

Because butter and sugar can interfere with gluten’s natural ability to come together over time, it is preferable to knead this dough to complete development up front. That’s why I choose to use a stand mixer – because the process for this can be kind of enduring by hand (though it is possible). Using a stand mixer ensures a perfectly and effectively built dough with minimum effort on the baker’s part. Watch this video for all the ways to develop gluten in your bread.

I want to be more specific in this updated post about how to develop the dough properly in the stand mixer than I was when I originally published this recipe. This way, you can be successful mixing this dough using any stand mixer, or even by hand.

The ultimate goal: to knead this dough to a clear windowpane. When you pull up on a section of dough, it should not tear. You should be able to stretch the dough to a point where you can see through it before it breaks. The dough will show other signs of being ready, too, such as clinging to itself or forming a ball around the dough hook. If you have a KitchenAid or similar mixer, the stand mixer may start to “jump” when the dough builds sufficient strength.

The first step to achieving this is to mix the dough on a low to medium-low speed until the ingredients are fully combined and the mixture forms one cohesive mass of dough. This step simply brings our dough together and hydrates the proteins in the flour before the speed is increased and the focus shifts from combining ingredients to forming gluten. Too fast a speed during this initial mix can start to organize gluten that is barely created, negatively impacting the development of the dough.

Next, we increase the speed and knead the dough forms a windowpane. The speed you choose is up to you and what your mixer (and dough) can handle. The basic guidelines are this:

• A lower speed will take longer, while a higher speed will knead the dough much faster.
• A lower speed will keep the dough elastic (strong, not stretchy), while a higher speed will create extensibility (stretchiness).
• The dough temperature should not exceed 78 F (26 C).
• Use the guidelines from your mixer to determine what it is able to handle.

Bulk Fermentation

Letting the dough rise as much as possible, but not too much, contributes to the airiest of loaves. In an attempt to favor the yeast and reduce sourness, I recommend keeping the dough temperature between 70-75 F (21-24 C). Watch the dough and ferment until it doubles in size (at least; eight to twelve hours). If you developed the dough well in the stand mixer, you can let it triple in size before shaping. Though I favor an overnight method for this dough, use your knowledge of your environment to bulk ferment this dough appropriately.

The Filling

I tried many techniques for filling and shaping this pull-apart bread, and ultimately landed on creating a paste with softened butter. Melted butter does absolutely no good, as it all seeps to the bottom of the pan during the final proof. Adding the ingredients separately (as I do for my cinnamon rolls) leads to a lot of ingredients falling out during the slicing and stacking process. Making a paste is by far the superior technique and allows the filling to easily be spread from corner to corner of the rolled-out dough.

Sugar + Lemon

By rubbing lemon zest into the sugar, oils are released, contributing to a stronger lemon flavor.

Softened Butter

By using softened butter, we can effectively spread the butter (unlike cold butter) all over the dough and shape the mini loaves without fear of the butter pooling on the bottom of the pans (unlike melted butter) during the final proof.

Shaping

To shape this pull-apart bread, I chose to position the loaf pan vertically and stack the slices. This makes them easier to stack without having the slices falling over during the process. The slices will not reach the top of the pan, and that is perfectly okay. It is necessary for the slices to have room to expand during the final proof and bake, so they need to be loose and sort of spread out after they are stacked. To do this, I take my finger and place it on the top slice while I reposition the loaf pan horizontally. This keeps the slices from tipping over. Then, I give the pan a little shake to loosen and evenly distribute the pieces before their final proof.

Baking

These loaves are simple to bake, as they do not require the preparation of steam or a wash. Milk, sugar, and a good fermentation will cause perfect browning in the oven. I bake my milk breads (like this one) at a lower temperature than my water-based breads: 350 F (175 C). This “low and slow” temperature prevents over-browning and over-baking. A final internal temperature of 185 F (85 C) cooks these loaves until they are just done, leaving you with the softest and fluffiest end result. 

Cream Cheese Frosting

The final touch and perfect garnish. Though you don’t have to have it, I wouldn’t skip it.

Suggested Timelines

Overnight Timeline

Refrigeration Timeline

Quick Tip: Read the recipe in its entirety before you start cooking. This will help you understand the ingredients, steps, and timing involved, and allow you to prepare any necessary equipment or ingredients beforehand.