Recipe: Vegan Sourdough Brioche Buns with Chocolate Chips
Super soft and vegan chocolate brioche buns with a tangzhong and sourdough. The chocolate buns without yeast are still fresh and tasty even after days.
Ingredients
Ingredients for Tangzhong
- 20 g cake flour bread flour (or type 550)
- 100 ml water or (oat) milk
Ingredients for the dough
- Tangzhong
- 400 g wheat flour
- 40 g sugar
- 40 g sourdough starter
- 60 g soft butter or vegan butter alternative
- 240 g milk or a vegan alternative
- 100 g chocolate chips dark chocolate
- 1 pinch of salt
Instructions
Day 1
- To make the tangzhong, mix 20 g flour with 100 g water and bring to the boil briefly while stirring. Cover the tangzhong and leave to cool completely.
- Mix the tangzhong, flour, water, sugar, soft butter, chocolate chips, sourdough starter and salt to form a dough.
- Cover the dough and leave to rest at room temperature for four to six hours. Place the dough in the fridge for one to two hours.
- Place the dough in the fridge for one to two hours and then divide it into nine equal parts with a pastry knife* and round it.
- Place the buns next to each other in a greased oven dish* or on a baking tray.
- Brush the top with milk and place in the fridge overnight.
Day 2
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees using a steam tray consisting of a stainless steel oven dish* and lava stones* and bake the chocolate buns for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown.
Notes
The soft butter and tangzhong make the dough very soft and difficult to work with. That's why I put it in the fridge for one to two hours before shaping it. Cold dough is usually firmer (especially if it contains butter) and more elastic and therefore easier to handle. You can find more tips for sweet doughs with sourdough here.
Sourdough starter: The sourdough doesn't have to be freshly fed, but it shouldn't have been more than a week since it was last refreshed. If you have discard left over, I have the right recipes for you here. I feed my sourdough with equal parts water and flour. For the flour, I use a mixture of wheat flour and wholegrain rye flour. If you feed your sourdough with a different water-to-flour ratio, you will need to adjust the amount of water in the recipe accordingly.
Butter: You can replace the butter with a vegan alternative. The butter should be soft so that it combines well with the other ingredients.
Milk: You can make the recipe with cow's milk or a vegan milk alternative. The milk should be cold so that the dough does not become too soft.
Chocolate drops: I prefer to use dark chocolate drops so that the finished chocolate brioche buns are not too sweet.
If you want perfectly round chocolate buns, I would bake them with enough space between them on a baking tray. If you want your buns to have as little crust as possible, you can also bake them in a baking dish with less space between them. The chocolate buns then grow together during baking and only develop a thin crust on top.