Iyengar Bakery Style Khara Buns

Today I have a popular Bangalore Iyengar bakery style khara buns. These buns are savory and can be served for breakfast with some cream cheese or with butter. These can also be served as an after school snack or for dinner. From what I have read, the popular way of serving it is with butter and some spicy peanuts.

I made these buns in May for that month's Home Bakers Challenge and could not post it right away. I had drafted the recipe and saved it on my hard drive, uploaded the pictures to Flickr and was going to update the blog in few days. Then my laptop crashed and lost the recipe draft. Once I got my new laptop, I got lazy and never got to draft the recipe again. Well, I guess it was good in away, it is coming handy for this bake-a-thon. I was going to post it on Friday but could not get the post ready & had to swap the posts. I posted the recipe I had initially scheduled for today.

This preparation of buns is lengthy, at least time consuming as the dough has to be proofed and all that time invested in the preparation is worth. I lost the notes I noted down after baking the buns, when my laptop crashed. Hence I am rewriting the source recipe. I do remember using more flour than listed in the recipe but do not remember exactly how much I used. I followed rest of the recipe to T. I would not have minded baking these buns again but never got to bake it again. If it were not this time consuming, I somehow would have managed to re-bake the buns.

After my laptop crashed, I learnt the hard way to backup my drafts to another drive right away. So now, I directly draft all my posts or make rough drafts of my recipes and post using google docs. This way the drafts are always online and I can access them from any device, regardless of where I am.

Source: Eat, live, burp (link not working)
Total Time: 3 - 3 ½ hours
Preparation: 40 minutes
Proofing Time: 2 ½ hours
Baking Time:20 - 25 minutes
Yields: 8

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups All-Purpose Flour + more for kneading (I think I used a total of 2 - 2 ¼ cups flours)
1 ½ tsp. Active Dried Yeast
¼ cup + 1 tbsp. Milk
½ cup Water
1 ½ tsp. Sugar
3 tbsp. Butter
1 tsp. Salt
¾ cup Onions finely chopped
5-6 Green Chilies, minced (I used small green chilies from Indian store)
⅓ cup Cilantro Leaves, finely chopped
1 tsp. Cumin Seeds
1 tsp. Oil

Preparation:

Take milk and water in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 30 seconds, until warm.
Place milk in a large enough bowl to hold the dough.
Add sugar, yeast and mix well. Let it rest for 15 minutes until the mixture is frothy. If it is not, that means the yeast has not been activated and start again.
Meantime, heat oil in a pan. Add cumin seeds and let them pop. Add finely chopped onions, green chilies, pinch of salt and cook until onions are soft. Add cilantro, mix well and keep aside until required. It is essential to cook onions to not kill the yeast in the dough.
Melt 2 tablespoon of butter and add it to yeast mixture along with salt and mix well.
Add flour one cup at a time to the yeast mixture and whisk until the dough is smooth.
Transfer dough to a floured surface and knead for at least 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and non-sticky. Add more flour if necessary.
Flatten the dough with hands, place onion mixture in the center and fold it to seal.
Knead again for another 15 minutes until the onion mixture is incorporated into the dough. If the dough becomes sticky because of the onions, add more flour and knead well.
Grease a big bowl with oil, place the dough in it, cover with a kitchen towel and let the dough almost double in size. Keep it in a warm place and this should take about 1 ½ hours.
After the first rise, knead the dough again for another 7-8 minutes to remove air bubbles.
Divide the dough into 8 equal parts and shape into buns. Place them on a parchment lined baking sheet.
Cover and place the baking sheet in a warm place for about 45 minutes. Make sure the buns do not double more than the original size.
After 45 minutes, preheat the oven to 425F.
Brush the tops of the dough with milk and bake in the oven. Reduce the temperature to 350F and bake for 20-25 until the top is slightly brown and the buns sound hollow when tapped on top. Since oven temperatures vary, it could even take upto 30 minutes. Keep checking 20 minutes into baking and keep checking every 3 minutes until the buns are baked.
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter and brush the baked buns for a nice shine.