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Filling for German Buns
1 egg 1 cup brown sugar ½ cup Five Roses flour.
Mix the above. Roll out your buns and spread on the filling. Then roll up and cut off in slices. Bake. Do not put the buns too close together as they spread.
This is a filling only — the book assumes you already have a sweet yeast bun dough rolled out on the board, as given elsewhere in the same chapter. The three ingredients make a thick, almost fudge-like paste rather than a pourable one.
- What you need firstAny enriched sweet dough will do: roughly 4 cups flour, 1 cup scalded and cooled milk, 2 tsp instant yeast, ¼ cup sugar, ¼ cup butter, 1 tsp salt, risen once. Roll it to a rectangle about ¼ inch thick before spreading.
- The filling is a paste, not a liquidOne egg with a cup of brown sugar and half a cup of flour gives a stiff spreadable mass. Beat the egg first, then work in the sugar and flour; if it will not spread, a teaspoon or two of milk loosens it without making it run out at the ends.
- Add fat if you want a soft centreModern cinnamon-roll fillings carry 3-4 tablespoons of softened butter, which is why they stay gooey. This one has none, so it sets firm and slightly chewy — closer to a baked sugar layer. Butter the rolled dough before spreading if you prefer the softer result.
- Spread thinA heavy layer forces the spiral apart as the buns rise and the sugar leaks and burns on the pan. Leave a half-inch bare margin along the far edge so the seam can be pinched shut.
- SlicingCut slices about 1 to 1¼ inches thick and set them cut side up. A length of thread drawn under and up through the roll cuts more cleanly than a knife, which drags the spiral out of shape.
- Spacing and ovenThe instruction not to crowd them is the one that matters: leave a good inch between buns in the pan, since they roughly double. The recipe gives no temperature or time; for enriched buns of this size, 375F for 20 to 25 minutes works, baking until the tops are well browned and the centre spiral is dry.
- YieldA dough of about 4 cups flour rolled to a 12 by 16 inch rectangle gives 12 to 14 buns, which this quantity of filling covers comfortably.
- Brown sugarUse light or dark brown sugar to taste; pack it lightly rather than firmly to avoid an over-sweet, gritty layer.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, with offices in Montreal and mills in the west, and was offered to purchasers of Five Roses flour; its recipes were largely solicited from Canadian housewives, which helps explain why so many are terse, assume a known basic dough, and name the brand in the ingredient list. "German buns" here appears to refer to the sweet rolled-and-sliced yeast pastry associated with German-speaking settlers — the same broad family of baking as the cinnamon roll and the schnecken, whose name means "snails," for the spiral. This particular filling happens to contain no butter or cinnamon.