The honey and buttermilk elevate the flavors of this soft wonderful bread to a point where it barely needs butter, if it needs it at all! It's so delicious I will find excuses to make it for dinner and for morning toast. Sure there's a few, perhaps odd, ingredients, like ginger and baking soda, but do not worry, the resulting bread is amazing! In fact, I think the baking soda may actually help this bread to be more soft and tender. The recipe is here, and pictures of the process are below.
The original recipe is from: https://www.restlesschipotle.com/buttermilk-bread/
Ingredients:
1 Tbsp. active dry yeast (10 g)
1 tsp. sugar (4 g)
¼ cup warm water (57 g)
2 cups buttermilk (488 g); warmed to 80-95°F (warm to the touch)
A pinch of ground ginger (optional)
1/3 cup honey (115 g)
¾ tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. salt (12 g)
5 1/4 to 5 ½ cups bread flour (780 g to 844 g)
¼ cup salted butter, soft (56 g)
Directions:
Mix yeast, sugar, and water together in a large mixing bowl and let rest until foamy (5-10 minutes).
In a separate bowl, mix together the warm buttermilk, ginger (optional), honey, baking soda, and salt.
Add the buttermilk mixture to the yeast mixture and mix well. It may bubble up and that's okay!
Start adding flour, about 2 cups at first, and mix in well.
Add in the butter and mix well.
Add the remaining flour, about ½ a cup at a time, until the dough is somewhat firm but still soft and kneadable. Use less flour at a time the closer it gets to forming a dough.
Take the dough out onto a clean surface and knead 15-20 minutes, or until it is smoother and elastic. Add a little more flour while kneading if it is too sticky, but a little stickiness is okay.
Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place for 1 ½ hours, or until doubled.
Take the dough out, divide in half and shape it into two loaves for 9x5” loaf pans, or into buns; I use a 9x9" pan for 9 buns. Place the shaped dough into buttered pan(s).
Lightly butter the top of the loaves/buns, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled, about 1 to 1 ½ hours.
Preheat the oven to 375°F (or 350°F if your oven runs hot).
Bake loaves for 30-35 minutes, and buns for 20-30 minutes, or until golden all over and 200°F internally.
Let cool in the pans 10 minutes before removing to cool on a wire rack. Buns can be eaten fresh and warm, but I recommend letting the bread cool a little longer, or completely before slicing, unless you plan to eat all of it at once!
Store leftover bread (if there are leftovers…) on covered at room temperature up to 3 days or freeze up to 1 month.
This bread is fantastic, just a plain slice or bun is phenomenal, and you can add butter and other fancy things if you think it needs it!
Make 2 loaves, or about 18 buns.
The ingredients I used. I love the local honey from my farmer's market, even if it makes me sound pretentious I do not care.
After mixing the water with yeast and some of the sugar. Let rest.
After about 5-10 minutes it should look like this. Puffy and foamy. The yeast isn't dead!
Then, mix together the warm buttermilk, honey, ginger (optional), baking soda, and salt.
Then add in the warm buttermilk mixture into the yeast mixture.
And mix together. It may foam up and that's normal!
Then start adding the flour, about 2 cups at first, and then 1/2 cup or so at a time, mixing between each addition.
Once about 2-3 cups are added, add in the soft butter.
And mix in.
Continue adding flour, but add less and less as it gets to be more of a dough.
Now it's quite sticky but more of a dough. At this point I decided to take it out of the bowl.
I added a little more flour as needed and started kneading.
About halfway through kneading, it is getting smoother!
Done with kneading. Still slightly sticky but much smoother.
Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise.
After rising, it puffs a lot!
From one half of the dough I made 9 buns.
9 shaped buns lightly buttered and placed in a buttered pan.
For the other half of the dough I made a loaf, which you can just make with the whole half-piece of dough, but the three dough balls makes a cute result!
After shaping the loaf and lightly covering with butter. You don't need to divide the loaf into 3 pieces like this!
Cover to prepare for the second rise.
After rising.
Ready to bake!
Buns after baking.
Loaf after baking.
After cooling in the pans about 10 minutes, remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Or eat the buns fresh!!