Ingredients
Method
- Grind the saffron with a touch of sugar to enhance the saffron flavour, use pestle and mortar.
- Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add milk and warm to max +37 C.
- Crumble the yeast into a large mixing bowl, and add the lukewarm liquid and stir until the yeast has dissolved. Mix in the saffron.
- Add salt, sugar, and a portion of the flour to the mixing bowl with the liquid. Work into a dough (either by hand or with a machine). Keep slowly adding flour little by little until you can lift the dough out of the bowl and knead it on the counter, but be super careful not to add too much otherwise the buns will be too dry. The dough is quite sticky, and it should have a nice shine to it.
- Put the dough back in the bowl and cover with a towel and let the dough rise for about one hour until the dough is twice the original size. During this time you can make the almond paste filling.
- Mix all of the ingredients for the almond paste filling in a food processor until the paste is very smooth.
- Prepare baking trays with parchment paper. The buns need quite a bit of space to grow so prepare a few trays.
- Once the dough is twice as big, knead it on the counter and divide it into two parts (If you wish to skip the filling then you can divide the dough into 30 equal pieces instead). Set one of the halves aside. Roll the other half with a rolling pin into a large rectangular shape. It should be rolled quite thin. Spread some of the almond paste on to half of the rectangle, then fold the dough in half so the filling half is covered by the other half. Cut the dough into 15 strips. Pick one of the strips up and gently stretch it. Fold and twist into the desired shape and repeat for the rest of the dough.
- Once all the buns are formed and placed on the baking trays, let them rise for another 45-60 minutes, depends how quickly they expand.
- Preheat the oven to 225 C.
- Bake the buns for about 8 minutes each until they are lightly golden, but keep a close eye on them because they are not nearly as delicious when they are over baked and dry.
- Once you remove the buns from the oven, lift the parchment paper and the buns onto cooling racks, because they will continue to bake on the hot oven tray and then there will be a risk that the buns will become too dry.
- You can give them a quick brush with melted butter to give them a nice shiny glow. Do this right after they come out of the oven, as my mom taught me they can get sad and wrinkly otherwise. :) Sprinkle with the pearl sugar now as well if you wish, or add the raisins if you are making the classic shape.
- Enjoy with mulled wine or a nice cup of coffee or tea! :)
Notes
* You can either purchase premade 200 g almond paste/marzipan, or you can make your own consisting of ground almonds and powdered icing sugar. It's roughly a 50/50 ratio. Then add the butter and other ingredients for the filling.