Flour for Norwegian Cinnamon Buns

Asked by deeptisharma. Answered on 24th March 2013

Full question

Dear Nigella Team, the recipe for Norwegian Cinnamon Buns in Nigella's book Domestic Goddess mentions just flour. Which flour am I supposed to use-plain flour or bread flour? Thanks, Deepti.

Our answer

For the Norwegian Cinnamon Buns the recipe uses regular plain (all-purpose) flour rather than bread flour. In Domestic Goddess the recipes state bread flour, or strong white flour, where this is necessary. Plain flour has a lower gluten content than bread flour and will give the buns a slghtly softer, more cake-like texture. It is not unusual for some enriched bread doughs to be made with plain flour - challah is often made with this type of flour.

Also Nigella mentions in the introduction to Domestic Goddess that she likes to use pasta "00" flour instead of plain flour so you could also consider this as an alternative.

Please note also that all flours have different liquid absorbtion rates and for this recipe the dough can occasionally end up on the wet side. So you may want to start by adding only 3/4 of the egg butter and milk mixture to the flour then add the rest of the liquid a little at a time until you get a soft and slightly damp dough.