Bon Appétit joins Chef Miro Uskokovic, owner of NYC’s Hani’s Bakery to make their best-selling malted cinnamon bun. Hani’s is a modern American-style bakery that has become very popular with locals, often with queues down the block. Light, fluffy, and airy with a gooey cream cheese glaze, it’s no surprise these cinnamon buns sell out fast daily.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Miro Skokovic, owner and executive chef at Honey's Bakery in New York City and today we
00:07are here to make our perfect version of Honey's Malted Cinnamon Bun. Honey's Bakery is modern
00:16American-style bakery. Oftentimes we have lines down the block and we sell out pretty quickly.
00:22Malted Cinnamon Bun is Honey's best seller. Sometimes by the time you make it to the front
00:26of the line, the cinnamon buns are gone. It looks large and fluffy and moist and has a lot of cinnamon
00:32and like a gooey, milky cream cheese glaze on top.
00:38Let's do the first step. We're making the most important part of the cinnamon bun. So we're
00:42adding cinnamon into this bun in the form of a schmear where we are mixing all of these ingredients
00:49together so it will be easier to spread on our dough. So we want to mix dry ingredients first,
00:54which is our dark brown sugar. We can most definitely use a light brown sugar but dark
00:57brown sugar has a higher molasses and it means just like a little bit more of that like toffee
01:03caramely flavor. A lot of cinnamon and api flour. I'm just going to give it a quick mix.
01:13Okay, so now that all of the dry ingredients are incorporated, we're going to mix the lyle cane syrup,
01:19which is like the second British byproduct of processing sugar. With our butter that we just
01:24slightly melt it and let it cool. Lyle's syrup will add a little bit of the chewiness and the moisture
01:30to the schmear. Some recipes call for addition of corn syrup, which is great. I find that lyle's or cane
01:36syrup has that like a buttery toffee flavor that plays very well with the butter and with the cinnamon.
01:43You know it is important and your butter is neither too hard nor too soft, but it's like this beautiful
01:48tempered creamy texture. I'm going to turn it back on and we're just going to mix it
01:54until it comes together. So now we're going to slowly start adding our eggs one by one.
02:00Okay, so our schmear is done and looks like frosting and that's what exactly you're looking for. Now that
02:12schmear is ready, we're going to move on and we're going to make our dough.
02:19Here at Honey's we are using a brioche dough. We're not serving our bun warm. We are serving them
02:25usually at room temperature. So we want to make sure that even when they're at the room temperature,
02:29they're still like soft and fluffy and moist and you can achieve that by using enriched dough like
02:35brioche that has a good amount of butter. First thing we're going to scale our flour. We are using
02:41King Arthur special patent flour blend, which has about a 13% protein content. It really gives you a
02:47nice structure, like nice chewy dough. Now we're going to add our eggs. We're using white granulated sugar.
02:53It's usually the best sugar to use when making dough because it doesn't have molasses which can alter
02:59and affect your yeast and the rice. Whole milk. We are using fresh yeast. There's also dry yeast and
03:06there's always a little bit argument between the pastry chefs and bakers which one is better.
03:09I don't really think that there is much flavor difference honestly. I just feel the fresh yeast
03:14is a little bit more resilient versus a dry yeast which I feel is a little bit more temperature sensitive.
03:20So we're going to mix our dough right now. We're holding off on adding salt and butter. Salt will tighten
03:25the dough also affect the yeast as well and the butter will affect the formation of gluten.
03:30So we're going to first develop the structure before we add those two ingredients. So our dough
03:35is mixing right now. It's going to take about 10 to 15 minutes. There are two different kinds of
03:39mixers. There's the planetarium mixer which is kind of like an all-purpose can do doughs, can do cakes,
03:44can do cookies. There's also something called a spiral mixer or dough mixer which is specifically designed
03:50to make only dough. It mixes the dough faster and prevents dough from overheating which can affect
03:57the yeast and gluten formation as well as the texture. Here we do not have that because you know
04:03Honey's Bakery specializes in multiple things not just the dough. That's why we're using a fresh yeast
04:08because it's more resilient but we are also chilling our ingredients for at least 30 minutes to an hour
04:14and that will prevent the dough from overheating and affecting the texture. So in order to check the
04:20strength of our dough and gluten formation we're going to do a windowpane effect check which means
04:25we're going to just stretch a little piece of dough in between our fingers and just see how elastic
04:29it is and you know it's taking a while to tear so that's a great thing. We're going to add salt, butter.
04:38We are now just going to have this thing going for next 10 to 15 minutes. Our dough is looks ready.
04:45It is pulling from the side also looks nice elastic and shiny. So we're just going to take it out of
04:52a mixer. It is important to either put it on a cell pad which is like non-stick pan liner or you can
04:59align your tray with a plastic wrap spray with a little bit of pam spray and then just put your dough
05:04on there. We're going to cover it with more plastic wrap and we're going to bulk ferment this dough which
05:12means we're going to leave it in a bulk as it is to sit at a room temperature for about like an hour
05:18or two. This is where the flavor is going to be built the structure you know it's going to like double
05:23or triple in volume. Okay so it's been an hour and you can see a difference in a dough. It has risen
05:29nearly doubled in volume. Removing these gases that have built up during the bulk fermentation is going
05:35to allow us to get rid of those like big bubbles and create more like finer brioche dough. Okay so now that
05:42we have tightly wrapped this we're going to put it in a walk-in to sit overnight it's going to build
05:46the flavor but it's also going to build the structure and it's going to firm up so it's easier
05:50for us to sheet it when the time comes. Okay here is our dough that's been sitting for about 12 hours
06:02nice and chill so it's going to be much more easier for us to sheet it. So this is a commercial sheeter
06:08somebody calls it a roller. What this is doing is just essentially sheeting out the dough to the
06:13thickness that you want. At home you would just use a rolling pin. If you go higher number the dough
06:20is going to be thicker so you're not going to have like visually those beautiful spirals that you would
06:26if you go thinner. Also if you go too thin it might end up being too tough and like too much smear and
06:33become like moist and gooey. Now that we have finished sheeting our dough we're going to put it in a
06:37freezer for at least an hour so it firms up so the smear and rolling part is easier for us to achieve.
06:47Our sheet of dough has chilled so now we're going to apply our smear. I just want to spread it in like
06:52nice and even amount all around and that's it and now we're going to start rolling it. So always the
07:02beginning is a little bit harder especially if your dough gets soft and start sticking to the parchment
07:09paper but after that initial roll it just gets easier. You know you want to roll it tight not too
07:15tight you know you want to make sure that there is enough room to expand and we're going to put it in a
07:24freezer for a few hours until it is practically frozen and that's going to allow us for like
07:33easier slicing and a better shape. So we're using this like a handy tool that a lot of bakers and
07:39pastry chefs use which is called a bicycle cutter. We're just using it for scoring. If you do not have
07:45a bicycle cutter score you just use a ruler. Just a bit old-fashioned rulers. You know it's very important
07:51that all of your cinnamon buns are uniform so they are baking at an even rate and also you want to
07:56ensure that every customer gets the same size. So now that I have marked my buns I just use good old
08:03knife and this is why freezing is essential because it cuts easier and cleaner. So we like to bake them
08:11in individual molds rather than baking them together just to make sure they're all even. You can most
08:17definitely bake them in 13 by 9 inch pan. Some people really love that like super like gooey and
08:24like soft middle of the cinnamon bun bake. So we're using these plexiglass molds from Matfer and you want
08:31to use something that has the bottom so that it catches all that gooeyness and schmear that could
08:36potentially reach on the bottom. These are non-sticks. I'm going to cover them with a plastic wrap. We will
08:42put it in a mold while it's still frozen and then around 9 pm every night we will pull those frozen
08:50buns in a mold and let them sit at room temperature at about 70 degrees so they will slowly defrost and
08:57proof so by the time the first steam is in at 5 am they'll be ready to go in in the oven. We're going
09:04to take these trays in our kitchen and then we're going to put it in a speed rack and let it proof.
09:12Our buns are ready. The way to check is we just want to like slightly press it if it's like bouncing
09:21back slowly with like a little indent that means that it is ready. We are using rationale combi oven
09:29so you can either like cook with a hot air or you can steam or you can do both and it really gives us
09:35a beautiful puff rise like makes like a nice crust that it's not too crusty it's nice and soft
09:43and also keeps the buns super moist. You can most definitely just like use your regular home oven
09:49which is just a dry heat. Sure you can like spray a little bit of water or like add a little bit of
09:54water on the bottom to try to mimic the combi oven but you know if you're just baking it at the regular
10:00hot air it won't be as moist and fluffy and it might create like a thicker crust which again will
10:08prevent it from rising and fluffing up. And now buns are done. We're going to let it cool down for a
10:21little bit before we apply the melted glaze on top.
10:27Next up I feel is probably the everybody's most favorite part of the cinnamon bun and that is the
10:32glaze on top. I usually find like two types of glaze that most people use either it's cream cheese
10:38frosting which is kind of like thick and fluffy or it's like a runny sugary glaze and we wanted to kind
10:43of combine both. So we're just using good old Philadelphia cream cheese full fat always and we're
10:48going to paddle this just a little bit to make it creamy so we're adding powdered sugar.
10:55Okay so at this point we practically have a cream cheese frosting you know we can just
10:59like rip this further until like it's light and fluffy but as I mentioned earlier we want to make it a
11:05little bit like looser and gooey and anxious so we're going to continue to add some other ingredients.
11:11We're just using regular kosher salt so the salt will kind of help balance that sweetness. A little bit of
11:17vanilla extract. I am a huge fan of malted milk powder or just like malt flavor in general which
11:23kind of gives it that like barley, toffee, buttery, slightly caramely flavor. If you're not familiar
11:30with malted milk powder sometimes it's also called ovateen. It's essentially dry milk that has barley
11:36malt added to it for I guess extra nutrition but also extra flavor as well. Malted milk powder is really
11:42what makes our glaze special. We have a little touch of nutmeg there just to kind of amp up and kind of
11:48tie all those flavors together. The last ingredient we're going to add is just the whole milk. It's
11:52going to give it like a little bit of the richness but also a beautiful sheen to the glaze. So we make
11:57the glaze usually a day before just to allow for the malted milk powder to hydrate and melt into a glaze.
12:04And we want to mix it until everything is like creamy and homogeneous and there are no like lumps.
12:08Okay so this is done. We're going to let this rest overnight but we already made some yesterday
12:15so we're going to continue with our next step.
12:19This is the most exciting part which is glazing our buns. We're going to first take them out of the
12:24molds and put them directly on deli paper because we want to make sure that all of the sticky glaze is
12:30contained. We're using just a cookie scoop to put our glaze on top again to make sure that it's nice and
12:36consistent. Use back of the scoop just to spread it around and let it kind of drape and fall down.
12:45It's almost four ounces of glaze on top. What we were looking for at the end when it came to glaze
12:51is just again that there is like a generous amount of it that you can get it in every single bite but
12:56also we want it to be like nice and shiny and also sticky. We didn't want it to like get like fully like
13:03hard like a frosting. We wanted to like maintain it like a gooeyness even if you know take it home
13:09and eat it like two three hours later. And if you do take it home to eat it later we do suggest pop
13:15it in the microwave for like 10 seconds and it brings it to really next level. We are finally here.
13:22Our malted cinnamon bun is ready so let's try it.
13:25You know unless you need wet towels after eating cinnamon buns. Did you really eat cinnamon bun?
13:35It's super soft, super fluffy, moist and glaze is gooey and unctuous. The cinnamon is like super strong
13:41and spicy and like coming through despite all of the glaze. In my opinion this is perfect cinnamon bun.
13:47There's a reason why people stand in line.