Arrufadas or bread rolls from Coimbra

I have to confess that I am not particularly fond of Portuguese pastries and bread. Perhaps it is because of my Polish roots. I used to eat dark wholegrain bread and here in the Iberian Peninsula, we have mainly the white. I love elaborate cakes with fruits, layered with whipped cream or full of spices.  Portuguese bakers do not need much more to make a cake than one thousand eggs, a tonne of sugar and maybe some flour. ;) Pastries and cakes are always wildly yellow and often covered with some ovos moles (a kind of paste made with yolks and sugar, of course).

Here, in Lusitania (as they sometimes call Portugal), the food is usually rather simple, which definitely does not mean tasteless. The local cuisine puts more stress on the extraction of flavour from a specific, high-quality product, than on the complex marriage of flavours and culinary techniques. Fortunately we don´t lack fresh fish, seafood, good wine or cheese. The Portuguese coffee is excellent as well.

Occasionally you can also find something very tasty in the realm of sugar and eggs. My last discovery is called arrufada (from the Portuguese arrufar for sulk, fuss, get angry). These are sweet buns usually sprinkled with sugar. But do not worry! The buns are not so fussy as their name suggests. I suppose this funny name comes from the little picky eaters. These sweet arrufadas are sometimes the only thing kids want to eat!

In the past these sweet bread rolls were eaten mostly on festivals, fairs and were very popular during Easter. Today you can buy them in almost every bakery in Portugal.

We love to eat fresh sweet bread for breakfast, so I decided to give them a try. It proved to be a very interesting recipe, although my idea of adding some sweetened condensed milk changes a little the "all-Portuguese" original. The crust is nicely browned and very delicate. The crumb is light, sweet, rich in flavour and, of course, as befits a Portuguese roll, intensely yellow. ;)

Arrufadas come from Coimbra, the city famous for its university - one of the oldest in Europe (est. 1288 A.D.). In the South of Portugal the buns are almost always sprinkled with sugar but in the Northern part of the country you can also find some coconut on the top. But most of Portuguese people will call the latter version pão de deus (divine bread). To avoid excessive sweetness I sprinkled my bread rolls with black and white sesame seeds.

Sweet bread rolls from Coimbra 
(Arrufadas) 

Wet ingredients: 
50 g (1.75 oz) butter, melted 
75 ml (2.5 fl oz) milk, warmed 
3 eggs, slightly beaten 
200 g or 150 ml (5 fl oz = 2/3 cup) sweetened condensed milk 

Dry ingredients:
500 g (17.5 oz) white wheat flour type 65 (you may substitute it with bread flour)

grated peel from 1/2 lemon 
25 g (1 oz) light brown sugar
1/3 teaspoon salt
2 and 1/2 teaspoon dried yeast

Topping:
1 egg, beaten with 3 tablespoons of single cream (10% fat) to brush the top
sugar or white and black sesame seeds to sprinkle

Sift all the dry ingredients. Put in a bowl and make a well in the middle. Pour all the wet ingredients into it. Mix in the bowl and then knead on the counter until you have a smooth and elastic dough. You may do all of this in a bread machine on "Dough" cycle. Cover the dough and  leave it to rise in a warm place until it has doubled in volume.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Slightly flatten it with the palms of your hands, form a long roll, and divide it into 12 equal portions. 
Form each piece into a roll (here I found an excellent tutorial). Put the rolls seam side down on the baking paper and leave to rise to double in volume again (it takes about 40 min). 
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180ºC. Brush the rolls with a mixture of egg and cream and sprinkle with sesame seeds or sugar. Bake until they are golden brown for about 25-30 min.