Despite loving home-made soup, I often feel it’s not ‘enough’ for a meal. Sure, crusty sourdough is more than acceptable. But when you want to up the calorie or yum factor, these are the things to make. An enriched brioche dough made into buns, which yield and ooze with cheese. You can make these rolls separate, as stand alone buns on a tray, but I like making them together in a round tin so you have to split them after baking. You can make them the day before you need them, or start them early in the day if you want them for the evening. But either way think of these a good half a day before you want to eat them.

These were originally in Delicious magazine.

Oven when you get to that bit: 180C.

For the buns you will need:

250g plain flour
Half a teaspoon of salt
One teaspoon of fast-action dry yeast
15g sugar
125ml whole milk
Two large eggs
50g unsalted butter, at room temperature and diced.
A bit of extra butter for later, melted

The filling:

100g ricotta
50g mozzarella cut into little pieces
25g parmesan grated, plus extra to sprinkle atop
One tablespoon of ground black pepper

I use my Kenwood stand mixer for this. You could of course also do it by hand.
Put the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl (the stand mixer bowl if that’s what you’re using), make a little well in the centre and then add your milk and one of the eggs. (Don’t add the butter just yet.)

Using the dough hook (or a fork and then your hands but if you do this the recipe recommends you mix the butter into the flour first, before adding the egg and milk) mix everything together until a smooth and elastic dough forms. I know mine is done in my stand mixer because it all groups around the hook. This takes about ten minutes. If you do it by hand it make take more or less time, depending on how angry you are and how ferociously you knead.

Now, if using a stand mixer, add the butter a few pieces at a time and continue kneading/mixing until everything is incorporated. I find it goes really greasy and there are a few moments of panic but everything does come together eventually.

Form a dough, put it in a bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight or for a few hours.

A couple of hours before you want to eat them, take out the dough and make the filling by mixing together all the ingredients in a bowl. Then divide up the dough into six pieces, roll each piece out into a rough circle. You will need to put an equal amount of filling into each them pinch the roll shut and put each bun seam side down in the tin (which you have lined with parchment paper). Because I can end up with unequal amounts of filling, I usually portion it up separately so I know I have enough filling for each and one bun doesn’t end up with too much/too little dough.

When you’ve done these to all the buns, cover with a tea towel and leave for about 90 mins (will depend on how hot or cold your kitchen is) until about doubled in size (this is always so hard to tell but do your best). About ten mins before you think they are done, preheat your oven to 180C.

Beat the remaining egg, brush the buns with it and then bake for about 20 mins, until golden. When out of the oven brush with a little melted butter and sprinkle with parmesan just to up the fat content here…ha ha..Allow to cool ideally before eating. Any that are left over can be kept in the fridge and softened in a suitable microwave setting for about 10-15 seconds to 40 seconds (know your microwave!)