Hot cross buns and cheese buns made with biga ホットクロスバンとチーズバン

As the Covid-19 pandemic started to unfold we decided to prepare by buying in basic food ingredients such as flour, sugar, rice and fresh "winter vegetables" such as potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and squash which would keep for some time. Our reasoning was that if food shortages developed  we could live on these basics by baking bread and cooking the stockpile of veggies. (Shortages did develop, for example, eggs were not available for a while and many of the shelves in the super market were bare. One week we bought the last two bags of rice at the Japanese grocery store). Feeling smugly well prepared, my wife was horrified to realize that we only had one 4 oz. jar of yeast much less than we thought. We still had baking powder and soda, so we could make quick breads but the lack of yeast put a serious wrinkle in our well laid plans. We were further horrified to discover that in addition the the shortages mentioned above, there was a major shortage of yeast. It was not available anywhere. Apparently, other folks had the same strategy we were employing. The yeast shortage was soon followed by shortages of flour and sugar. Luckily, we had bought in plenty of those items but we had to come up with something to deal with the yeast shortage--"enter biga, stage right". My wife remembered a Pantone recipe she made some time ago that used a sponge called biga and required much less yeast so she looked it up and began substituting it in the breads she made, with remarkable success.

The picture below shows two breads my wife made for Easter and served on her favorite Easter bunny plate. The one on the right is a hot cross bun that she made before the yeast shortage so it was not made using biga. It didn't have a frosting cross on top instead my wife cut the baked bun in half and put the cream cheese icing used for the cross inside. The bun on the left is a cheese bun made with biga.

Here are the cross sections. The cheese roll has, of course, cheese stuffing that was baked in the bun. The hot cross bun lost the cross but the icing was sandwiched in the muffin after the muffin was baked.

Although we posted the hot cross buns before, the cheese rolls are new. My wife started making "biga" (or "starter" or "sponge") to conserve the yeast we have. Although it takes overnight fermentation, it has the additional benefit of much better flavor. I asked my wife for the recipe.

Ingredients:
Biga: (Hers has more liquid than  traditional biga. So, this is a cross between biga and poolish)
1 3/4  cups flour
2 cups buttermilk
1/8 tsp yeast

Dough:
biga
3 tbs sugar
2 tsp salt
3 tbs butter
2 1/4 cups flour as needed (to make a total of 4 cups including flour in the biga)
1/8 additional yeast (optional) it will result in a quicker rise.

Cheese filling
4 oz. feta cheese crumbled
5 oz. ricotta cheese
2 oz. smoked gouda, grated
2 oz. monterey jack, grated
2 oz. double Gloucester, grated (other cheeses could be substituted such as smoked mozzarella)
1 egg
sprinkle of red pepper flakes (to taste)

Day 1: in the evening mix together the ingredients for the biga (#1) cover the bowel with plastic wrap and several towels and leave out overnight. Picture (#2) shows what it looks like next morning.

Day 2: Make the cheese filling by adding the cheese ingredients together and mixing until blended then set aside (#1). Make the dough using the biga and dough ingredients. Let rise in a covered bowel (#2). (The rise will be very slow. I made the dough at 8:00 AM and formed the rolls at 4:00 PM).  After the first rise punch the dough down. Cut into 2 1/4 oz. pieces. Using a small ice cream scoop put a scoop of cheese in the middle of the dough (#3) and using the dough cover the cheese (#4). Put the muffin into a heavily greased large pyrex baking dish and let rise again (#5). (This rise will go much faster). Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until golden (#6). Remove immediately to let cool. As the picture shows some of the filling leaked out as the muffins cooked but plenty was still left inside.

These muffins were not as fluffy as the same recipe made with commercial yeast but the flavor was just incredible; very rich with depth. The texture is also a bit more chewy but still a wonderful mouth feel.   These buns were made with much less yeast. The original recipe made with commercial yeast would have used 4 1/2 tsp yeast while this recipe used a maximum of 1/4 tsp yeast. The thing we noticed was that as the dough was rising it gave off a pleasant strong yeasty smell that was wonderful and not something we noticed when we made the muffins using commercial yeast. Also, the smell while the buns were cooking in the oven was stronger than usual adding to one of the basic pleasures of making bread; the smell as it cooks. The combination of the flavor of the dough with the cheese filling was really wonderful. We couldn't get enough of it. So although the use of biga was born of necessity (a shortage of yeast during the corona-19 outbreak) it has opened up a whole new dimension of bread making that we would not have tried otherwise. Once having tasted the wonderful flavor of this bread we will be using biga as much as possible.