Cinnamon buns inside and out Part 2: Zeeuwse bolus

What Bolus? I won't expect you to pronounce the first, but when you say "bogus" with an "l" you're close enough!

Inside out refers to cinnamon and sugar on the outside of the buns. When we were allowed some playing time doing the September challenge, this old fashioned Dutch bun came to mind. I found that although in Holland this particular bun is baked in the South-Western islands province called "Zeeland" (gee...that sounds like we have a grand country!), the origins might go back as far as the 16th century stemming from the Portuguese "bolo" and made their way to Holland by means of Portuguese Jewish bakers.

Base for the buns is a fairly regular sweet bread dough, like the one we made for the cinnamon buns. In fact I made twice the amount of dough and made half of it into these bolus-buns. What you will be looking for is a handsome ball of dough, just slightly slack, somewhat softer than you would want for a regular bread because this dough needs to be rolled into long ropes.

Recipe in a nutshell: knead white bread dough, roll out in ropes through sugar mixture, form and bake.

Dough recipe:

500 gr ap flour
1.1/4 ts salt
1.1/2 ts yeast
300 gr water or 320 gr milk (I like milk!)
75 gr butter
zest of one lemon or - prepared lemon-sugar zest
or - lemon extract, 1 tsp
for rolling: 250 gr dark brown sugar and 2 tbs cinnamon, mixed*

(*the Dutch basterd suiker.... I know I know....it contains inverted sugar syrup, is very moist to the touch and has a slight molasses-like flavour, substitute with traditional brown sugar or maybe muscovado sugar).
Make a straight forward dough, combine ingredients, knead, either by hand or stand mixer! Again, we are looking for a slightly slacker white bread dough, malleable and windowpane test-proof). You might want to play with the liquid here, but I think the 300 water / 320 milk should do the trick for you as well.

The first rise is a fairly short one, approx. 45 minutes. It doesn't necessarily need to double, half way there is fine. Now, proceed to divide the dough in pieces of equal weight. I like to have pieces of 40 to 50 gram each which will give you around 14-16 pieces of dough. Form into little ball shapes, cover and let relax for 20 minutes or so. This short rest will literally relax your dough and makes it easier to roll into ropes.

We are going to roll ropes in stages (depending on how "willing" your dough is you'll need two or three stages).
First stage is roll into short ropes.
Second -and third stage: in comes the sugar-cinnamon mixture!

Cover your work surface with the sugar mixture and proceed to roll the ropes to a greater length, aiming for 30 to 40 cm (12-16 inches), rolling the ropes in the sugar mixture. This will give you not only longer ropes but also provides your ropes with the tell tale sign of stretch marks (we all know how that looks like....I do!). You might discover that the sugar hinders you to stretch the ropes to full lengths and it may help you to spray an area with oil first, sugar on top and then roll.

Next is to form the ropes into their final shapes. This time I made knots as shown here: Traditionally these "Zeeuwse bolus" is turban shaped, or if you wish a snail’s shell, I did one just to show you how it looks like (see pic next to the dough recipe). For obvious reasons (3 teenager boys in da house... I choose to make knots.)

The finished coils need another rise, on a lined baking sheet, about 60 minutes until visibly doubled/puffed. Here's another thing: this sugar I use is fairly moist and will attract even more moisture....so you don't want to store them in the fridge while rising, try to keep them dry as possible; a tea-towel to cover preferred over plastic. See what I mean by moisture? (and stretch marks?)

Bake in a hot preheated oven (250C/475F) for 8 minutes. Timing is crucial here, you'll want them done but not crusty. Still soft but not gooey...you know what I mean. :D. Traditionally eaten with coffee or tea, and spread with a knob of real butter (not on top but smeared on the flat under side) or dunked in a cup of cocoa. Either way, enjoy!

Still not enough of cinnamon and bread? Check out this recipe as well!