Pumpkin brioche buns with raisin

I’m writing from the other side. Because on the other hand, here I should have free airways, the nose normally-colored (not the color of pantone-pink-fluorescent-that-I was using- at kindergarten-to-draw-the-skin), a not inflamed throat. But I’m writing from the other side, so imagine to reading me with the voice of Dante’s Charon. I just miss the fiery eyes. How pain you must be feeling, flu fellow sufferers, lying in the sofa-limbo, full of crumpled cleenex with camphoric smell of thyme cream. That terrific terrible tremendous vision I gave you! But I’m still funny. Having say that, if I curled up in my fingers every ounce of strength not dissipated in sneezing is just to tell you about this pumpkin brioche buns with raisin. I really did want to give you my recipe, because it took me years (since October 2014, I’m not joking) to find the perfect recipe of my pumpkin brioche buns with raisin. But I finally found the one.

It’s perfect as they were the pumpkin rolls from the bakery down in the street of my grandparents’ house, which is now closed with the wrapping paper stuck to the windows.
Perfect as the moment when my grandma put me in hand 5000 Lire and told me to go buy a snack at Ms. Cesca bakery, watching me hidden behind the cyclamens of hers balcony, afraid that something could happen in those 10 meters of walking.
Perfect as old-time bakeries, from which you left with the soles of shoes dirty of flour and the smell of yeast in the nostrils.
Perfect as the scent of the pumpkin in the oven, which warms you even in the most gray and rainy day of all this fall.

INGREDIENTS (for about twenty buns):

• 850 g of Manitoba flour
• the pulp of a small pumpkin (yellow flesh to green skin, now you know which is my favorite)
• a small pumpkin (kabocha variety, sweet and dry-fleshed)
• 25 grams of brewer’s yeast
• 250 ml of rice milk
• 70 g of smooth butter
• 100 g of brown sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
• 120 g of raisin
• apricot jam q.s.

And if you like the idea, once baked, you can sprinkle the rolls with the orange and cinnamon glaze made by mixing together the following ingredients:

• 100 g of icing sugar
• 20 ml of hot water
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• Cinnamon powder q.s.

Matching soundtrack: A spoonful of sugar, Mary Poppins

PROCESS

1. Cut the pumpkin in half, remove the seeds and cut it into small pieces. Put them on a baking sheet with greaseproof paper and bake at 160 ° C for half an hour (or until the flesh is tender and cooked).
2. Remove the peel from the cooked pumpkin and blend in a kitchen machine with 100 ml of rice milk until it become a puree. Set aside.
3. Make a first dough: melt the yeast in 150 ml of warmed milk, add in 100 g of flour and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Stir and let stand half an hour.
4. In a mixer pour 750 g of flour, the already made dough, sugar and pumpkin puree.
5. As soon as the dough is become smooth and homogeneous, add small pieces of smooth butter continuing to mix (of course you can also knead by hand), a pinch of salt and the vanilla extract.
6. Now incorporate to the dough the raisin.
7. Let the dough rise in a covered bowl, a couple of hours in the oven will be sufficient.
8. Flip over the risen dough in a floured surface and form twenty balls.
9. Arrange them in one – or more – baking sheets with greaseproof paper, spacing them about one cm from each other. Let rise covered for at least another hour (but 2 hours will be better).
10. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 ° C for 20 minutes.
11. As soon as your pumpkin buns are cooked and baked brush them with the apricot jam diluted with a little ‘hot water or, if you prefer, with orange and cinnamon glaze.

Ph. Sara Cartelli
© The Eat Culture