Kummelweck (Kimmelweck) Rolls - Panini al cumino

A simple and easy recipe this month for We Knead to Bake's challenge: Kimmelweck Rolls, soft buns with coarse sea salt or fleur de sel and caraway seeds on the top. Ideal for sandwiches and even burgers, though we just had them as normal bread.
They are German in origin as Kummel means caraway seeds while Weck means roll. In Buffalo in New York, these rolls are used to make a speciality sandwich called the Beef on Weck, with thinly sliced rare roast beef and horseradish and it is typically served with fries and a dill pickle.

Aparna suggests also a couple more recipes you can make with this dough, shown below.

You can fid a very helpful video here.

I made some buns with special sesame seeds I bought last winter at Salone del Gusto e Terra Madre in Turin. They are red becaus e flavored with Umeboshi, you can see the picture at the bottom of this post.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water

1/2 cup warm milk

2 tbsp oil

1 tbsp honey

1 egg white (optional)

1 1/2 tsp salt

3 to 3 1/4 cups bread flour

egg wash (optional)

coarse sea salt and caraway seeds

Mix together the warm water and the warm milk and stir in the yeast. Let it sit aside for about 5 minutes. Knead by hand or with the machine.

In the bowl of your machine, combine the yeast mixture, oil, honey, the egg white and stir.Now add the salt and about 2 1/2 cups of flour and knead, adding as much more flour as required till you have a smooth and elastic  dough that is tacky but not sticky. Shape the dough into a ball, and place it in an oiled bowl. Cover loosely with cling film and let rise for about an hour, until it is almost double in volume.

Deflate the dough well (not kneading), shape into a round and and allow it to rise, covered, for 30 minutes more.

Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces and shape each into a smooth ball, then slightly flatten it. Place them on lightly greased or parchment lined baking sheets. Spray or lightly brush with oil, loosely cover and let the dough rise for 30 more minutes. Brush with eggwash (or something else that will make sure the topping sticks when baking), then cut slits ( like an +) on the top using a sharp blade or scissors.

Sprinkle the top of the rolls with sea salt and caraway seeds, and then mist with water. Bake the rolls at 220C (425F) for 5 minutes and then quickly mist with water again making sure you don’t keep the oven door open for too long.

Bake for another 20 minutes or so until they’re brown and done. Cool on a wire rack. This recipe makes 8 large burger bun sized rolls.

For the Vienna Loaf:

Follow the above recipe but with the following changes:

after the second rise, divide the dough in half and shape each half into an oval with tapered ends. After the final rise, apply the egg wash and then slash the top with a 1/2" deep lengthwise slit. Leave out the salt and caraway seeds.  Bake at 200C (400F) for about 35 minutes, including the 5 minutes after spritzing with water.


For the Salt and Pepper Sticks:

Again follow the above recipe for the rolls, but make the following changes :

leave out the second rise and do only the first rise. After that, divide the dough into 13 equal pieces. Roll each piece out into a 12" rope of even thickness, and place them  1-1/2" apart on the greased or lined bakng sheet. Let them rise now. Apply the egg wash, but do not make any cuts. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt crystals and coarsely ground or cracked black pepper. Do not spritz with water and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes.

This recipe also goes to Susan's weekly YeastSpotting.