Everything Bagel Cheese and Egg Brioche Buns

Also: The Gift Guide!

December is here and I’ve got a few goodies up my sleeve. First up are my Everything Bagel Cheese and Egg Brioche Buns. They’re a fittingly festive thing to eat for breakfast at Christmas time and they’re also really inexpensive, but feel special. Everything Bagel seasoning is doing the rounds and that’s because it tastes terrific. We’ve had a few varieties in the cupboards for a while that I’ve been reserving to bake with and here is the result…

So many recipes are described as a ‘labour of love’ these days. It’s code for ‘long and difficult’. And though it’s true you can’t make brioche dough without a few minutes ticking past, you don’t need to be a baking maestro to make these. The recipe pays you back in volume because it makes 12 buns (or you can make 6 buns and freeze half of your dough to enjoy another time).

Everything Bagel seasoning and eggs are great friends: the onion, poppyseed and sesame flavours pair so well with the fattiness in yolk and frankly blandness of egg white. It’s why I like eating gomashio with my boiled eggs (thanks to my Grandma for this inherited idiosyncrasy). Cheese and egg are also mates – as flan, omelettes, soufflés and quiche exemplify. It follows that bringing all these elements together in one carby vehicle is destined for greatness.

I think Christmas is the ideal time to make these buns because it’s the time of year when you inevitably have people around to share your home-cooked goodies with, and having a batch of something easy for breakfast is quite helpful when there are many mouths to feed.

Blind baking might feel odd to do with dough rather than pastry, but it’s a must here if you don’t want completely overcooked eggs but you do want dough that’s soft and bouncy. The holes created by blind baking are just big enough to fit an egg yolk and some egg white into, but you may have some white leftover (keep a small bowl on hand when filling them to pour this into). You’ll also probably have some spilling over the bun edges, but these cheesy, crispy, eggy bits are secretly the best bit, so don’t fret. The chaotic look is good here. You can freeze any leftover egg white to make meringues or you can add them to your next batch of scrambled eggs or omelettes.

I tried a couple of the rolls topped simply with cheese and the EB seasoning and they were delicious served with soup, so I recommend trying them like this too if you’re looking for a simple dinner roll recipe for the season. Let’s cook…

Cheesy Everything Bagel Brioche Buns

You’ll need to start this recipe the day before you want to eat the buns.
You can make this recipe without a standmixer with dough hook but it will be a lot of sticky kneading, so be warned!

For the buns
120g wholemeal flour
230g milk
80g water
3 eggs
400g flour
4g yeast
50g caster sugar
1 level tsp salt
220g unsalted butter, cut into 2cm chunks, at room temperature, plus more for greasing

For the filling
12 small eggs (or fewer if you want a few cheesy buns without eggs)
150g Cheddar or Lancashire cheese, or a mix of both, grated
4 tbsp Everything Bagel seasoning*
Egg, cream or milk, to glaze

1. The day before you want to eat, make the dough. To begin, we make a tangzhong – this is where a paste of flour and milk is cooked to start the dough off, which increases the softness of the end result. Start by warming 100g of the milk with the 80g water in a saucepan over a medium heat until it’s steaming and you can just see bubbles forming. Then turn the heat right down and cook for 1 minute ensuring it doesn’t boil. Now remove the saucepan from the heat. Add the wholemeal flour and stir well to combine, ensuring there are no lumps. Put the saucepan back on the heat and cook until the mixture is thick and stiffened (it’ll look like a roux). Tangzhong complete! Scrape the paste into a stand mixer bowl.

2. Next, add the remaining 130g milk – make sure the mixer bowl feels cool to the touch. If it doesn’t, wait a few minutes or sit the bowl in iced water for a minute. Now, add the 3 eggs, whisking well, followed by the dried yeast and the 400g of plain flour along with the sugar and salt. Start the mixer up on a low speed and work the dough for 5 minutes. Now let the dough rest for 10 minutes, ideally covered with a pan lid or tea towel (you take a rest too).

3. Turn the mixer back on and mix the dough for another 5 minutes. Add the chunks of butter into the dough one cube at a time, and watch each piece get incorporated into the dough. This will take about 10-12 minutes altogether – when it’s all added in the dough will look smooth and glossy and great. Shape it with the sides of your palms into a ball and now it’s time for the dough to rest overnight. Transfer it to a lightly oiled container and either cover with a lid or clingfilm. Leave it on the counter for an hour and a half (until you can see it has increased in size) and then move the bowl to the fridge and leave overnight.

4. The next morning, shape the dough into 12 buns of roughly the same size and allow them to proof on the counter covered with a damp tea towel or clingfilm for 2 hours (the dough needs a long second proof in UK winter but if you’re in a warmer country you may not need as long), you just want the buns to have increased in size by ⅓.

5. Turn your oven on to 190°c. When the buns have increased in size by a third, place them on two greaseproof-lined paper baking trays a couple of inches apart and use the pads of your fingers to make circles of about 2 inches diameter in the middle of each bun. Pop a bit of greaseproof paper and some baking beans or a small oven-proof ramekin to weigh the dough down in the middle, and then blind-bake for 8-9 minutes or until the dough looks risen around the edges of your baking beans/weight.

6. Remove the buns from the oven and remove the weights and paper, then in each hole add in a little pinch of grated cheese, and carefully crack an egg, adding in some egg white and an egg yolk to each bun. (You might find there is more egg white in the eggs than you need to fill the buns, so I recommend having a bowl to hand to pour any excess into). Top each egg with a little more grated cheese and a teaspoon of Everything Bagel seasoning. Glaze the edges with the egg or cream/milk and sprinkle with more seasoning and cheese. Repeat for each bun then place back into the hot oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the egg yolks are cooked to your liking and the sides of the buns are well browned. It’s nice if the batch has a mix of egg yolk-doneness to add to the fun (they tend to as most ovens have a hotter and cooler side). Enjoy!

*(I used Cornish Sea Salt’s Everything Bagel Seasoning and Papo’s Everything Bagel Seasoning on testing). To make your own, see below.

Tips

• To make Everything Bagel seasoning, mix 2 tsp each of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, nigella seeds and salt with 1 tsp each of garlic and onion granules.

• I keep my dried yeast in the fridge to keep it from dying. If you’ve had yours a while and kept it out of the fridge, you may want to test it in some warm water and check it bubbles as you don’t want to go through all the work of these buns and find they don’t rise.

• The buns will last for several days (keep them in the fridge). They taste even better for the next few days if you microwave them for 15-20 seconds before enjoying.

I feel like Black Friday has ruined gift giving. It’s turned it into a rushed, frenzied, get-it-while-you-can weekend of activity instead of the leisurely, in-your-own-time, tick-them-off-the-list satisfaction that buying presents should be. The state of most people’s bank balances mean we have to partake in the big sale weekend pandemonium despite our better judgement, and it’s not fair. I used to love buying presents and I object to it becoming a stressful, impersonal hell.

If you still have people on your list to buy for who like to cook, here are the tools I firmly believe any recipient would use again and again, and thank you quietly in their head for giving them each time.

• An off-set spatula. It’s under a fiver, but it will change someone’s life. For icing cakes and buns, filling tart shells or just for putting mayonnaise on sandwiches with delightful precision.

• A baking tray with cooling rack set. The YouTube Cooks must have influenced the sale of 1000s of these baking trays with racks, but that’s because they are covetable as heck. If you know someone who likes to fry things (schnitzels, bhajis, arancini, etc) I really can’t think of a better gift. Also brilliant for anyone who likes to bake biscuits or buns, and excellent for cooking meats and making gravy because the rack sits above the tray so that all the juices can are collected and air can circulate around the meat when roasting.

  

  

• A saucier. A saucier is a saucepan shaped how it should be. As well as sauces (obviously) these pans are also the ideal shape for making curries, in that they’re similar to a kadai but with a handle. Either copper or stainless steel are very nice.

• A Japanese mandolin - I think I can state that Benriner make the best mandolins, because I’ve had mine for 12 years and it’s still going strong. I use it weekly, especially for potatoes, fennel and onions.

• If you know someone who bakes bread, the USA Pullman pan is the greatest loaf tin for the job. I use mine every month and it gives me tingles of excitement each time.

  

• I have to, again, recommend the Salter Manual Pull Chopper. For dicing, no other manual tool comes close. Making mincemeat of mirepoix while giving your muscles some time to shine too.

• A thali set. Who doesn’t want to serve themselves a thali at home? Also goated at keeping food hot on the table in the depths of winter. Simple pleasures, galore!

• Soups, Salads, Sandwiches by Matty Matheson. I don’t have this but I want it bad.

1 year ago… Clementine Friands
2 years ago… Mussel and Chickpea Pasta (and an Interview with Rose Matafeo)

Thanks for reading and see you next time for the first of the sweet Christmas recipes!