Fall gourmet series - I've got great buns · Tuesday September 22, 2026 by colin newell
Once the sun starts slipping below the horizon a bit more every day, our palates start thinking about the cozier food of the fall.
These sourdough butter buns tick all the boxes for fluffiness, great taste and texture and an easy bake.
While no sourdough bread project can be considered “beginner level” (I’d say that title belongs to my focaccia bread…), this one is not complex. It does have a few extra ingredients and if I were to hand out some initial advice, it would be “measure everything!”
On your first attempts, keep your digital scale handy! Measure twice!
Uses for sourdough butter buns…
Serve warm from the oven and slathered with butter. Use as mini hamburger buns for sliders. These buns can be the foundation for small sandwiches. You’re only limited by your imagination.Stuff you need…
- 9” × 13” glass baking dish
- accurate digital scale
- bench scraper
- mixing bowls
Ready your starter…
Sourdough starter is a living and breathing entity – and in order for it to be “ready to work…” it needs to be fed and “prepped” with time to ready it to “do the work…”This blog is not meant as a Sourdough instructional – you are going to find a myriad of tips on the YouTubes, Internets and Chat-AI critters.
In my case, I often take my sourdough starter out of refrigerator “in stasis”, then I “feed it…” and let it sit out on the kitchen counter for 6 to 12 hours to build a head of steam. Any sourdough bread is a work and exercise of “slow motion…” You can shape it to work around your life schedule in a variety of ways – that is up to you.
Dough ingredients…
- 2 tablespoons (28 g) butter
- 1 cup (240 g) milk (options include any and all nut milks and oat milk)
- 3 tablespoons (44 g) sugar (or 2 tablespoons of honey)
- 1 teaspoon (5 g) salt
- ½ cup (100 g) active sourdough starter
- 3 cups + 2 tablespoons (375 g) bread flour
Let’s go!
- Melt 28g of salted or unsalted butter in a small pan… gently… do not boil or brown the butter.
- Let cool until around 100 to 110 (F) or anything less.
- Add milk or nut-milk, sugar (or honey) and salt. Stir to combine.
- Temperature should be cool to warm — but not hot.
- Add in the 100G of fed and feisty sourdough starter.
In a larger bowl add your flour – no need to sift it. Bread flour, standard white flour or a combination of brown and white can work well.
Gradually add your liquid stuff (butter, salt, milk and starter…) to the dry (flour) mix.
You can use a stand mixer with the hook attachment and mix for 5 or 10 minutes but I like doing this part by hand – it is mindful and restful and you get a better sense of the texture and direction the dough is going in.
I aim for a shaggy ball of “dough” where the bulk of the wet mix has been absorbed by the dry.
Once you achieve this, cover the bowl with a warm towel and let the dough ball rest for 30 to 40 minutes.
After that first rest, I do my first of 3 to 4 pull and folds – each spaced around 30 to 40 minutes each. With each pull and fold, gluten strands are developing giving the dough ball strength and integrity…
There is a fair bit of technique used here to do the pull and folds and develop a good ball of dough – it is up to you to know where you are at with this or ask the AI or YouTube gods to assist your knowledge base. When you are happy with your dough ball it is time to commence the first cold ferment and proof. This entails throwing a moist towel over your bowl and putting it in the fridge overnight. With a long ferment, you will be rewarded with better taste and texture.
Your alarm clock has awoken you!
By morning your first peek into the fridge will likely be an exciting one.Your dough has risen by upwards of 50% or more – ideally double in size.
Either way, turn it out onto a floured bread board.
With a “bench scraper”, cut the dough ball into 2 pieces… and cut these two pieces into two pieces… and again until you have 12 “lumps” of dough each weighing in at around 65 to 75g. This is good. You now need to form each of the 12 pieces of dough into balls – this is a technique I have yet to master – and once again, your YouTube Jedi will be very helpful.
Set your dough balls into 3 rows of 4 in a lightly greased (buttered) glass baking pan.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in a 375 degree oven or until they are golden brown. If you can measure them internally, a goal of 190 degrees (F) Is ideal.
After you taken them out, give them 15 minutes or so in the pan before turning them all out (in a block) onto a cooling rack. Yes, they will have expanded in the glass baking pan and will have become cozy. Not to worry as they pull apart easily.
Within another half an hour or so, they are ready to pull apart and serve with your best three veg and a meat dinner, or as the foundation for sliders or a charcuterie plate – the sky is the limit – these are delicious buns — and if you don’t need them all at once, they freeze happily for months. Enjoy!
Colin Newell is a Victoria B.C. resident and avid writer. His nattering on about the subject of coffee culture has reached far and wide… and maybe still does…
