This is a bun that shoehorns everything I want for breakfast into one neat package. Sweet, savoury, peach and porky, spikily salty and sugary with a herbal twist. Umm, and booze…

I based this on Felicity Cloake’s chelsea bun recipe from her excellent Guardian Perfect column but replaced the butter for rendered Italian lardo. As you do. Well, I had the remainder of a lump of it reclining in the fridge and just knew it would enhance the dough for my intentions. Peach jam benefits from a lick of bourbon that’s echoed in an egg wash. I kept it fairly heavy on the pancetta after my introduction to Nuno Medes’ breakfast meat bread last week, an inspired addition to a newly launched breakfast menu at Taberno Do Mercado that also ticks many boxes for me, including as it does an oozing custard tart and some cute looking filled doughnuts. Alas, I haven’t made it there for breakfast yet, my delivery was from Clerkenwell Boy , my lunchtime partner in crime at, always perfect, Lyles.

• Makes 9
• 200ml whole milk
• 60g rendered pork fat
• 450g strong white flour
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 egg beaten
• 1 teaspoon salt
• sachet fast action yeast
• pancetta, finely chopped
• fresh thyme

For filling and finishing

• butter
• beaten egg
• caster sugar
• egg
• bourbon
• white peach
• lemon
• fresh thyme

I had some lardo in the fridge, so I rendered that down in the oven, obviously retaining the meat scraps to throw back into the dough, but you could use butter in it’s place.

Mix the milk with the pork fat. In a large bowl put the flour and sugar, whisk in the yeast, then add the milk mixture and egg and stir to combine before mixing in the salt.

Knead the dough on a clean surface for around 10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Replace in the bowl, cover and leave to rise for around 2 hours or until doubled in size.

Meanwhile make the jam. I use a very simple method, finely chopping 3 peaches, then add the juice of a lemon and a good level of caster sugar, around the same weight of the fruit. Boil for several minutes until it thickens then add a slug of bourbon and heat again until slightly reduced.

Knock back the dough, adding the chopped pancetta at the same time and fully incorporate then roll into a long rectangle. Spread with butter and the jam then roll up from the long side. Carefully cut into 9 evenly sized pieces, making sure not to squash them too much as you cut. Place into an oiled, square baking tray.

At this stage I left my buns to prove overnight covered in the fridge so that I could bake them fresh, and more importantly eat them warm, the following morning, but they only really need a 30 minute rise. When you’re ready to bake, brush with an egg wash pimped with a glug of bourbon, scatter with thyme and caster sugar and place in the centre of an oven pre heated to 200 degrees for around 30-35 minutes.

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The post Pancetta, Peach, Bourbon & Thyme Breakfast Buns first appeared on The Faerietale Foodie.

My Friday baking session was prompted by an insatiable craving to make pretzels. I’m guessing this stems from my booking a trip to Berlin paired with a highly suggestible nature. Pretzels, the soft kind, have never held any sort of appeal to me. I mean, neither have the little hard ones, but thats a given due to my ambivalence towards hard snacks. I felt like I ought to like the soft kind, I mean – bread, but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for a plain twist of it, neither deep fried, filled or doused in sugar and spices.

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Then I found myself with several hours to kill at Berlin airport with very little food options other than pretzels and/or sausages – I’m convinced these are the mainstays of a German diet – this was my moment. Crestfallen my pretzel came with no accompaniment than the paper napkin it was wrapped in, it’s safe to say I had low expectations.

Imagine my surprise then as I pulled off a piece. I tore through chewy skin into soft, yeasty bread, spiked aggressively with nuggets of salt. I couldn’t fathom how it could be so delicious or taste so uniquely of ‘pretzel’. Yet I continued to eat until there was none of the knotted bread left and my mouth stung from salt’s bite. Such a revelation was it that I immediately purchased another for my dinner when I went through to departures and cursed myself for discovering this new love just as I was leaving the country.

I knew I needed to make them myself. I also knew that despite having never made them before, a basic recipe would never inspire me and so I devised a, not too complicated, spin on a classic. That overwhelming saltiness paired with deep yeasty flavour notes had my head in a spin and was something I wanted to push further. Lardo leaves behind the same aggressively salty kiss but with porky silky sweetness, so I’ve added this in place of butter to enrich and push saltiness through the dough, topping with smoked salt to build layers of flavour.

I’m going to be honest here, I couldn’t be faffed to deal with the whole knotting technique, so little batons were good enough for me. I served them for dinner that evening with bratwurst and then again for breakfast with fruit, labne and a little truffle honey for pre gym indulgence – a versatile bread I’ll certainly make again.

Having not made them before, I stuck fairly strictly to the instructions on the BBC Good Food website for German Soft Pretzels

• Lardo & Smoked Salt Pretzels – Makes 8 batons
• 500g plain white flour
• 130g luke warm water
• 130g luke warm full fat milk
• 40g rendered lardo (or butter)
• half a tablespoon dark muscovado sugar
• 1 sachet fast action dried yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 litre water
• 3 tablespoons baking soda
• Halen Môn smoked salt

Put 100g of flour in a bowl with the yeast and water, cover with cling film and leave for 5 hours to develop a deep yeast flavour.

Finely dice a good chunk of lardo or fatty prosciutto and put into a pan in a medium heated oven until it renders down. Drain off and reserve the fat and also the remaining lardons.

Add remaining flour to yeast mixture with the sugar, salt, milk, rendered fat & lardons and knead until you get a firm and smooth dough. Leave covered for around an hour until doubled in size.

Knock back the dough and divide into 8 equal sized balls, then roll each into a sausage shape. Leave uncovered in a warm place for 30 minutes to rise again.

Boil water in a large saucepan and add the baking soda.

Place the risen pretzel batons near an open window with a cold breeze, or do what I did and blast them with a fan for a couple minutes, this helps them develop their skin and unique texture.

Drop the pretzels, one at a time, into the boiling liquid and fish out after around 5 second.

Lay them straight onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, sprinkle with smoked salt then cut deep slashes into the top of the dough.

Place into an oven pre heated to 200 degrees for around 15 minutes or until a deep brown.

The post Lardo & Smoked Salt Pretzels first appeared on The Faerietale Foodie.