This week Petra baked a delicious looking Sicilian Easter buns: Pani di cena. It is a bread that is traditionally baked on Good Friday and which is often glazed with icing and topped with sugar sprinkels. I fell in love with this buns directly and decided to serve them for breakfast on Good Friday.

I changed the recipe a little bit depending on my personal habits – I used the pulp of a vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract and because of the high amount of sugar and butter I decided to add them at the end of kneading, so they couldn’t interfere with the gluten development. After forming the buns I placed them in the fridge, but they didn’t rise so much here because the butter in the dough get stiff in the cold.

The next morning I preheat the oven to 30°C and let the buns rise there for 1 hour, in this time they doubled their volume!

During baking the smell of the buns was seductively: a scent of butter and vanilla filled the kitchen. And tasting them after they cooled down proofed that their scent did not promise to much.  A very rich sweet bread, that reminds me of brioche, incredible soft, buttery and luxurious. Continue reading →