Drożdżówki. Sweet buns with pudding or cheese.
Grace, a friend of ours, has asked us if we had a recipe for drożdżówki. Well, now we do.
Grace, nasza przyjaciółka, zapytała nas czy mamy przepis na drożdżówki. Teraz już tak.
We like being asked for something specific. One reason is because it’s a great source of inspiration, another because it’s a great feeling when people come to you and see you as a source of good recipes.
We met Grace because of a linseed. Baking a lot of bread means a lot of seeds, and I tend to mess the orders up from time to time. We ended up with a couple kilograms of just organic linseed that had just expired – totally fine for home use. I published it on Olio, a very interesting app that helps us reduce waste. Grace’s daughter got in touch and Grace came to pick it up. We ended up exchanging contacts. A couple days later Grace sent as pictures of bakes from the Mielnik Bakery in Poland, including drożdżówki, asking for the recipe.
Drożdżówka (pronunciation from Google Translate) is a sweet bun, usually with some sort of filling. The variants I recall are:
- cheese,
- blueberries,
- strawberries,
- pudding,
- plums,
- jam,
- poppy seeds
- crumble
I’m sure I missed a couple here. It comes in a whole range of shapes and sizes.
I decided to go for ones with cream pudding and cheese.
Now you can call me an ignorant but I just don’t know if a pudding powder is easily available. It is in Polish stores. So is twaróg, Polish white cheese. I recommend you go to a Polish store to get them, ask for budyń without sugar (booddin) and fat or semi-fat twaróg (tvah-roog). The staff will understand.
Depending on which option you choose, you may need to adjust your ingredients – I provide the quantities of filling for the whole amount of dough. If you want to use both, halve the portions or double the dough amount. But it will be a lot of dough.
Recipe sources:
- The dough, the pudding: Przyślij Przepis
- Cheese filling: Domowe wypieki
- Crumble: Beata Śniechowska
Planning
You will have to take things out of the fridge before baking. I really recommend having all ingredients in room temperature. Let’s say this will be 30 minutes before at minimum. You can do it much earlier, of course.
Dissolving yeast: 15-20 minutes; dough mixing: 5-15 minutes; dough rising: varies, let’s say 60-90 minutes; shaping: 5-10 minutes; final rise: 5 minutes; baking: 20 minutes. Together: 2-3 hours.
Ingredients
Makes around 16 buns. The author of the original post made 18. Splitting the dough into 8 equal portions is simpler than splitting to 9, so 16 is the number.
The dough
- 500 g plain flour
- 50 g fresh yeast (I wound use 30-40 next time)
- 60 g sugar
- 100 ml milk
- 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 175-200 g natural yoghurt
- 50 g rapeseed oil
- 1 flat teaspoon salt
- an egg white for glazing the dough
- optionally some poppy seeds to sprinkle on top
Pudding filling
I buy the powder in Polish stores. This recipe assumes you have one without sugar in it. Be aware this is for the whole batch of 18 buns.
- 250 ml + 125 ml milk
- 1 package of pudding without sugar, this box had 35 g in it (I used cream flavour, orignally it was vanilla; chocolate should go well too)
- 20 g sugar
- a handfull of rasins or berries (not essential)
Cheese filling
Just make sure the cheese has high fat content (tłusty). Be aware this is for the whole batch of 18 buns (or even more). I originally adjusted this recipe to the size of a cheese packaging (500 g). It was way too much filling.
- 300 g twaróg
- 30 g soft butter
- 80 g sugar
- 2 egg yolks
Crumble
This may still be too much (I halved the quantities compared to what I used). If so, you can use the rest to make biscuits or a cake. Or freeze it.
- 100 g plain flour
- 50 g soft butter
- 50 g icing sugar
Preparation
Take the milk, crumble yeast into it, add a tablespoon of the flour (from the weighted amount) and mix for about 5 minutes until it makes a runny mixture. Leave to get active for about 15 minutes. It should then form bubbles on the surface
Put all the dough ingredients in a bowl and mix to form the dough. I am lazy, I used a dough hook in a mixer for about 5-8 minutes. Mixing by hand will take more time. Make sure all ingredients are incorporated. If mixing by hand, leave the oil as the last ingredient to add. Leave the dough for 60-90 minutes – this should be enough for it to double its volume. I let my dough triple the volume and it was overproofed when I used it
The dough
Time for the pudding: heat 250 ml of the milk and sugar in a sauce pan. In the meantime disolve the powder in remaining milk. When the one in the pan is hot and the sugar is disolved, add the cold part. It will get thick reasonably quickly. Take off heat and leave to cool. Note that the instructions on the box mention more milk. This needs to be thicker
Prepare the cheese: grind it in a grinder (like a meat grinder) or using the blender. It should be smooth. Whisk the butter, sugar and yolks in the mixer until nice and airy, then gradually add cheese
Prepare the crumble – add the butter into flour and icing sugar and work it with your hands to get nice and crumbly, like a… crumble
Turn your oven on to 180-200 C degrees. Know your oven
The dough should have risen by now.
I have split it in two, rolled one half into a rectangle 30×40 cm, put the filling in, then rolled into a log and divided into 8 rolls which I then placed on the baking parchment, glazed with egg white and sprinkled the poppy on top.
Preparing the rolled buns
The other half got divided into 8 bits that I rolled into balls and then flattened, making a thinner part in the middle. Then I put the filling there and put in on the baking parchment. I glazed the dough with egg white and covered in the crumbles.
Making the round buns
In general I would recommend the first version for the pudding and the second for cheese – the cheese swirls have fallen apart during baking, but then they could have been overproofed
Rolled buns, ready to bake
Leave it to rise for 2-5 minutes (not more) and bake it for 20 minutes
Eat fresh. If you leave them for longer, you can have them with milk or tea or coffee. We loved them, kids loved them.
Drożdżówki
Before making I let Grace know that I would be making too many so she came over to take a couple. They liked it, so I’m happy. Grace, send me the pictures once you make them yourself, I’d love to share them 🙂
