Buns baked with 450 g finely sifted wheat flour and 50 g whole grain Øland wheat flour, the dough is cut into buns on a floured board. Buns baked with 450 g of finely sifted wheat flour and 50 g of rye flour, the dough is cut into buns on a clean, flour-free board. 

Basic recipe for the best sourdough buns

Sourdough buns are a great place to start if you want to get started with sourdough baking and want to bake without yeast. It's a bit easier than baking with a sourdough bread, and you need fewer tools. At the same time, the success rate is higher because it is easier to get a single bun to rise and get nice air holes than a whole, large loaf. 

TIP: If you don't have the courage to bake with sourdough but want a similar result, you can try this Recipe for cold-risen buns baked with berries.

Ingredients for the best sourdough buns

The great thing about this recipe is that you can vary it depending on what flour you prefer and have on hand. This way you can make sourdough buns with different looks and flavors with the same basic recipe. As a starting point, you will need the following ingredients:

Sourdough

First of all, you need an active sourdough. You can find a guide to starting sourdough here. The sourdough is used to make a young sourdough, which is stirred into the dough when it has risen by 50%. This means that you cannot take it straight from the refrigerator and use the sourdough in a dough. Instead, you must make sure that it is fresh and “freshly fed”.

Flour

This recipe uses 450 g of wheat flour and 50 g of wholemeal flour. However, you can vary which wheat flour and especially which wholemeal flour you use. Wheat flour must be finely sifted rolled wheat flour (also what many call "regular wheat flour") with a protein content of at least 11%. You can get this from Valsemøllen and Meyers, for example. You can choose to replace 200 grams of wheat flour with stone-ground (and thus slightly coarser) wheat flour. Here you can use Øland wheat flour or emmer flour, which gives a good taste. For wholemeal flour, you can use rye flour, spelt flour or Øland wheat flour.

Water

The dough for these sourdough buns contains a lot of water. This makes the buns extra fluffy, juicy and with a crispy crust. Such a wet dough is difficult to handle when baking bread, but it can easily be made into buns. Especially when we add whole grains and salt, which help the dough retain more liquid.

Salt

The dough contains a relatively high amount of salt. Both because it gives a good taste, but also because it allows the dough to retain more liquid. Therefore, remember to weigh out the salt instead of adding it randomly. You can use all types of salt. 

TIP: Use your sourdough leftovers from feedings to make food pancakes or crispbread. 

Tools for baking sourdough buns

When baking sourdough buns, you don't need nearly as many tools as when baking bread. You can easily make do with just a bowl, a baking sheet, and an oven. To make the work process a little easier and the buns even tastier, the following tools can be useful: 

• Stirring machine: When you knead the dough in a mixer, the gluten network develops optimally without you having to fold the dough.
• Condiment bucket: It's smart to let the dough rise in a so-called "condi bucket". A square, transparent plastic bucket with a lid. This makes it easy to fold the dough, and you can easily keep track of how much the dough has risen.
• Table scraper/dough cutter/dough spatula: This is a simple but extremely handy tool when handling dough.It is used to "chop" buns from the dough and scrape it off the countertop so that the air remains in the dough.

• Baking steel/baking stone: Baking the buns on a baking sheet gives fantastic results. When baked on the extremely hot surface, they will rise better and have a crispier bottom.

TIP: Also try this amazingly delicious walnut bread with Åland wheat flour or cold-risen bread rolls

No-knead sourdough buns without a mixer

If you make your dough without a mixer, it needs to be folded. This is done to develop a good gluten network so that the buns can rise, become fluffy and have fine air holes. This is done by stretching the dough and folding it over itself. This way you work with the gluten in the dough, and the dough will become stronger and more elastic. In the recipe, a total of four rounds of stretching and folding are made in this recipe, 20 minutes apart. The dough is then allowed to stand for 1.5 hours, so that it rises by a total of 20-40% before being refrigerated. 

TIP: Also try the recipe at rye bread with lots of kernels, farmer's bread without seeds or delicious chocolate rye bunIt is baked on sourdough.

   Before the first fold After the first fold Before the second fold After the second fold Before the third fold After the third fold Before the fourth fold After the fourth fold