Hot from the oven
Made these wonderful rectangular semolina buns and a batch of Dan Lepard’s legendary soft white baps today for our back lane BBQ! (Click on the links for the recipes)
Was a bit flummoxed about getting the softish dough onto the tray, but realised that the best thing was to roll the dough out on to the paper to start with, then pick the paper up together with the dough and plop it on the tray. I also made a bit of a mess of marking and scoring the bread but it mattered not a bit. Every last one was eaten and enjoyed by all accounts!
Soft white baps and semolina buns on the way to the party..
We had some very fine Italian spicy sausages full of fennel seeds and chile with ours.
If you don’t know it, Dan Lepard writes a great baking column each week in the Guardian newspaper, usually with ingredients that are easily available and fairly straightforward techniques for the home baker to follow.
Edit:
Celia has made these and partnered them with some fabulous burgers in chilly Sydney. Have a look here! And here are Di’s, which look very professional indeed. And Ulrike’s very smart buns. And C has made a loaf of it here, which I think is a smart move which would give you that lovely bread without all the hassle of shaping it into buns! I think Dan has created another winner here!
They seem really popular with kids, here are Christine’s, look at that scoring! and here are Heidiannie‘s too being enjoyed by her family and every time I see them I feel hungry all over again and think about making another batch…. oh look I did… Click here!
Zeb Bakes 
Oooh yes, we’ll have to make those semolina buns today… :)
They look great Joanna, thanks for the tip about rolling/shaping on paper, I’m hoping to make these tomorrow!
Hi Celia and C, look forward to seeing how you get on with this one!
The bit that’s missing, presumably the constraints of the Guardian wordcount allocated to the How to Bake column is a bit more detail on shaping and cutting, so I guessed that what you were supposed to do is cut through the dough into the 8 pieces but not actually move them around, anyway that’s what I did, and then sprinkled more semolina on top, found a butter knife, and tried to score with it, fairly ineffective as you can see, compared to Dan’s beautiful picture on his site. Then, when the bread is baked you can break it along the cut lines. That’s what I figured it looked like from his picture. By the time I was there it was too late to ask. But I was pleased with the crumb, and even though the baps were a little brown on top, the kids loved them :)
Yum, they look great. Perfect for a sausage to be slapped in the middle of it :-)
They look amazing Zeb.
Aren’t they a beautiful colour!
And just the right shape & size for our beef escalopes that we are having on the bbq tonight.
They really do look good. I find buns to be one of the hardest breads to make uniform. Size isn’t a big problem if you weigh the dough, but shape always seems to go a little wonky. Yours look like buns- good job-!
Ah ha, I can do round buns but all the other shapes, always come out a little ‘individual’ . Just for you Heidiannie, (everyone else look away) here is a shot of the barbecue breads with all their mountains and canyons as they came out of the oven.
Sorry, I looked. But your photo made me feel much better! I stupidly did try and separate them, but I have another batch rising which I’ll score as you say. Either way, they were completely delicious – the boys absolutely wolfed them all down!
You know what, I have no idea what our Dan intended us to do at this point. I thought yes, cut them and separate them, sort of like making ciabatta buns or something, but there wasn’t enough space on the paper on the tray and I thought no way was I going to move this dough more than I needed too, so I did them this way and I think he must have done something similar if you look at his picture it has a batch bread look to the edge – maybe someone should ask him? :)
When the dough is that wet, there really is nothing else you could do. Such a good idea, scoring them to pull/cut apart later. Maybe I’m making my dough too dry and that is why the rolls keep looking like giant puff balls even when I squoosh them down right before baking. I’m going to try this recipe next time.
Even in the pan, yours still look better than the big roley-poley balls I keep making!
And Dan has speedily answered Celia on his forum – ! Hooray! All is now revealed! Edit : April 2013 – Dan’s forum is now closed so from memory what he said was that one cuts through the dough to divide it into 8 pieces, but you don’t move them or separate them.
I was right about the space constraints in the magazine wasn’t I? I’ve been reading that column in the Guardian for a long time now….
Expect to see brilliant buns on Fig Jam and Lime Cordial very soon. Look forward to seeing yours too Heidiannie!
Edited to say:
Yes, Celia’s look amazing – look at these! Another stunning Dan Lepard recipe is baked across the globe….. :)
I’ve just seen these on Celia’s blog, so thought I’d better have a look at yours too. The dough looks as though it has a really nice texture and I can see they would be perfect for BBQs.
Beautiful looking bread! Between you and Celia, my tummy was growling so loudly I had to have a go at making a batch. Am loving the sound of your sausages you had them with, no such tasty delights here :) (and a back lane bbq sounds like much fun!)
I made these last weekend, right after I saw the recipe in my GR. They’re excellent with chicken salad. =) I’m glad I’m not the only one who had a bit of trouble figuring out what to do with the minimal shaping instructions. I did the same thing you did, cut through the dough but left it in place, then pulled the buns the rest of the way apart once baked. I’ll definitely be making these again soon! And I’ll have to check out the recipe for the soft white baps. His buttermilk baps are a favorite of mine.
Hi Di,
I haven’t made the buttermilk baps, I think I’ve missed out on that one. Thanks for recommending them :) We’ve just finished off the last of the soft white ones, toasted for breakfast, so they kept from Saturday to Tuesday, not bad in hot weather…