By 
2 h 40 min
6 – 8 Buns
Crispy European Buns (Pistolets)
After baking bread I wanted to try crispy buns, like you can buy in European (Belgium) bakery’s. I think it is quite nice to eat a nice crispy bun on weekends. But that was precisely the difficulty, getting my buns crispy.
You find very little about making crispy buns on the internet. The only tip I found was to squirt water into the oven before baking. But this did not give a nice crispy bun, at all. The explanation I always found about, why bakers have crispy buns, was that they work with steam ovens, ground ovens and special rise cabins.
But I was determined, I also wanted to be able to make nice crispy buns without special equipment.
So I started experimenting. It to me a lot of weekends to figure out the right amounts and have a consistently crispy bun. They were always delicious, but getting them crispy that was really a challenge.
In the end, it was a combination of four things that ensured that the buns were and remained crispy. Temperature, baking time, processing after puffing and amount of yeast.
What do you need?
- 300 gr (10.58 oz) patent flour
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- 15 gr (0,53 oz) unsalted butter
- 15 gr (0,53 oz) bread improver
- 6 gr (0,21 oz) salt
- 10 gr (0,35 oz) of instant dry yeast
- 170 ml (5,99 oz) lukewarm water *edited*
- ½ tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 tablespoon Extra patent flour
How to make it?
Weigh all ingredients and put in a bowl, knead for 10 minutes with the dough hook of your stand mixer or with your hands.
Prepare a bowl and grease it with olive oil. When the dough is ready, make a ball of the dough and roll it around in the pot so that the dough ball is covered with oil.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free place for 1 hour.
Prepare a baking tray and cover it with baking paper.
Make balls of the dough (from this amount you can get 6 or more if you choose smaller balls), you can weigh them so that you all have the same size balls. I usually do it without weighing the dough.
After puffing up, use the extra flour, take a little bit and rub this over the bun before putting it on the baking tray.
Do not put them too close together on the baking tray. They still double in size. Cover the rolls again and let rise for another 1 hour.
Preheat your oven to 150 °C or 300 °F hot air. (I really recommend using hot air, I have not tried it with a regular oven so I cannot guarantee that you will get the same result.)
Bake the buns for 30 minutes until nicely browned. Remove them from the oven and allow to cool on a cooling rack.
Bon Appetit!
