Homemade Dinner rolls/ Pav Buns

Soft and fluffy dinner rolls made using the Tangzhong method. These dinner rolls make great pav buns too, and are eggless.

There is nothing like hot fresh dinner rolls from the oven and today I am sharing a recipe for homemade dinner rolls/ pav buns that uses the Tangzhong method.

I had read about the Tangzhong method and always wanted to try it. Its a bread making technique that originated in Japan (and popularized by a Chinese cookbook author), where the flour is first mixed with water, cooked to make a roux, cooled and then added to your bread dough ingredients. The result is a soft and fluffy bread that remains soft for longer than the one made the regular way.

The chemistry behind the tangzhong method is interesting and one that Jenni from Pastrychefonline.com explains very well. She explains in the post that the bread is moist because of the water content in it. By cooking the flour with the water you help the starch molecules hold on to the water, and at the same time keep a portion of the flour in your dough from strengthening their gluten bonds, giving the resultant bread a slightly tender crumb. That doesn’t mean that your bread will lack structure. Since only 5-10% of the total flour used in the recipe is used in Tangzhong, you get the structure from the rest 95%, and yet get a tender and moist bread.

The other day when I was trying to look for pav buns/dinner rolls recipe and saw that Gayathri from Gayathricookspot.com used the tangzhong for her pav buns, I knew I wanted to make it. I have a good whole wheat dinner roll recipe on the blog, but you know how much I love trying new recipes, so decided to give this pav bun/dinner rolls recipe a try. Even though I always try to make my breads more whole wheat, this time I decided to not substitute any of the flour with whole wheat. I was making pav bhaji and wanted it to be exactly street style, where the pavs are never whole wheat, but the less healthy maida/all purpose.

The dinner rolls came out so perfectly soft and fluffy. The tangzhong method also yields bread thats remains softer for longer, unlike most homemade breads that become hard in a day or two. Unfortunately or fortunately, there was nothing left of the dinner rolls for me to test that theory. My dad who had been out of town and only arrived at dinner time to eat the pav bhaji, didn’t realise till I told him that the pav is also homemade. He thought they were store bought pav buns.

In case you are wondering how I served the pav buns, here it is. Click on the picture for the recipe for pav bhaji.

Ever since I have started baking bread at home, we rarely get store bought bread. With homemade bread you know exactly what is going in your body, and honestly once you know the few things to keep in mind while making bread, it is an easy process.

There are three tests I perform every time I make bread and I am listing those for you:

1. Window pane test: You do this test to make sure your dough has been kneaded properly and you have managed to activate the gluten. To test whether the dough has been kneaded properly, you should be able stretch out the dough to a thin film without breaking it. The dough should be thin enough to pass light through it. If the dough breaks then you need to knead it more. But if it stretches without breaking, then you have done enough kneading. For a pictorial reference, check this post out.
2. Rise Test 1: Stick two fingers till second knuckle and take them out. If indentation remains, dough is ripe and ready to be punched down. If not, cover and let rise longer.
3. Rise Test 2: A light fingertip touch to side of the risen bread, should leave indentation.