Kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato buns
Ingredients:
- 280 grams all-purpose flour (2 1/4 cups)
- 17 grams granulated sugar (1 tablespoon)
- 8 grams salt (1 teaspoon)
- 6 grams instant yeast (2 teaspoons)
- 50 grams pitted Kalamata olives (around 12 olives - 2 per bun)
- 50 grams sun-dried tomatoes, drained (about the same amount as the olives)
- 38 grams butter, room temperature (3 tablespoons)
- 175 grams lukewarm water (3/4 cup)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons melted butter (optional - for painting on buns after baking)
Directions:
In a large bowl or the bowl of your mixer, weigh out and add your all-purpose flour, sugar, salt, and instant yeast, and stir to combine all of your dry ingredients, making sure there are no clumps.
Chop the Kalamata olives and sun-dried tomatoes into small pieces and add them, along with the butter, to the dry ingredients. Stir to combine everything, and then add the room-temperature water.
If using a stand mixer, knead for 8 minutes on medium speed. If you are kneading by hand, you will need about 15 minutes of kneading after all the ingredients are incorporated together.
The dough should be smooth and a little bit sticky.
Place your dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 1 to 1.5 hours. The dough should be doubled in size.
Remove dough from bowl to a lightly oiled counter and divide into 6 pieces. I like to weigh my buns at this point to keep them all fairly consistently sized, and I usually get 6 buns that are all between 85 and 90 grams each.
Roll each of your six pieces of dough on the counter until you have 6 balls.
Add each ball to a parchment-lined sheet pan.
Press down the top of each ball with a lightly oiled hand or the lightly oiled bottom of a mixing cup or small pan. If you want very tall and round buns, don't flatten them at all. If you want medium-height but still rounded buns, press down only a little. If you want flat buns as you see in fast food restaurants, you should flatten each one fairly flat.
Cover your buns with lightly greased plastic wrap or a second sheet pan flipped over on top of the pan you're using.
Let the shaped buns rise for another hour or an hour and a half until they are nearly doubled in size.
Near the end of your final proofing time, preheat your oven to 375 degrees F (190 °C).
Bake your buns for 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheet pan halfway through the baking time. I typically bake for 7 minutes and then rotate and come back in another 7 minutes to see what my level of brownness looks like. At that point, your buns should be done all the way through; you're just trying to get them to the color you prefer.
Remove the buns from the oven and brush them with 1 or 2 tablespoons of melted butter for a glossy sheen (optional).