Nebraska Runzas #BreadBakers

A fluffy bun and a savory filling of ground beef, chopped cabbage and onion are the hallmarks of classic Nebraska runzas, a great midwestern snack. 

Way back in May of 2016, I was researching stuffed bun recipes for a Bread Bakers post in August and came across one for Nebraska runzas. It was originally published in the Washington Post, written by a food writer named Tim Carman who grew up in Nebraska.

While I didn't save the story he shared with the recipe, apparently his mom's homemade runzas were a breakthrough in the food battles the two of them were having. Unfortunately, the link no longer contains the recipe, no less the story, so I'm glad I copied and pasted that! 

I ended up not making the runzas 10 years ago, sharing instead some tasty cheese-stuffed-peppadew stuffed buns of my own devise. This time, I decided the Nebraska runzas had waited long enough! 

Nebraska Runzas

These stuffed buns don’t traditionally have any spice beyond salt and black pepper  in the filling but, as a Cajun person, I felt moved to sprinkle in some cayenne. It added a lovely little kick. Leave it out if you want to go old-school Nebraskan.

Ingredients

For the dough:

3⁄4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1⁄4 cup or 60ml warm water, plus 1/3 cup or 90ml room-temperature water 1/3 cup or 90ml milk

1⁄4 cup or 48g vegetable shortening

3 1⁄4 cups or 406g flour, plus more as needed for kneading

1 tablespoon sugar

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

Canola or other light oil, for greasing the proofing bowl

Milk for brushing on before baking

For the filling:

1.1 lb or 500g lean ground beef

Olive oil

1 small onion, cut into small dice, about 1 cup (about 125g)

2 1⁄2 cups chopped green cabbage (from 1⁄4 large head) (about 170g) 

3⁄4 teaspoon salt

Several generous grinds black pepper

1⁄2 teaspoon cayenne, optional

Method

Combine the yeast and the 1/4 cup or 60ml of warm water in small bowl or measuring vessel, adding a pinch of the sugar and stirring until the yeast has dissolved.

Combine the 1/3 cup or 90ml of the room-temperature water, the milk and shortening in a small saucepan; heat over low heat until the shortening has liquefied but the temperature of the mixture is no greater than 130°F or 54°C.

Add in the rest of the sugar and the salt and stir till dissolved.

(If during that time the yeast mixture hasn’t bubbled at all, your yeast might be dead. So dump it out and start over.)

Combine 1 cup or 125g of the flour, in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the yeasty liquid, the warm milk mixture and the egg to the mixer bowl.

Beat on medium-low speed until well incorporated. Stop to scrape down the bowl and beaters; then, on medium-low speed, gradually add the rest of the flour, beating to form a wet dough.

Change over to the dough-hook attachment and knead in your stand mixer or on a floured surface, adding a little extra flour, if needed, until you form a dough that’s smooth and elastic and a still a bit tacky.

Lightly grease a proofing bowl with oil, then place the dough in it. Cover with a damp towel or cling film and leave to rise in a draft-free spot for 1 to 2 hours or until the dough has about doubled in size. 

Meanwhile, make the filling. Fry the ground beef with a drizzle of olive oil in a large saute pan or skillet over medium heat. Cook until you get a few well browned crunchy bits, breaking up the meat to a crumbly consistency as it cooks.

Stir in the onion and cook for 6 to 8 minutes or until translucent.

Add in the cabbage. 

Cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring to incorporate, until the cabbage has softened. Season with the salt, black pepper and cayenne, if using. Stir well and remove from the heat. Set aside to cool.

Uncover and punch down the dough. Divide the dough into 12 equal portions (it’s good to use a kitchen scale for this) and roll them into balls. Divide your filling into 12 equal portions. (A scale is handy here as well!) These are my first six.

Working with one at a time on the floured work surface, roll out each portion of dough to your best approximation of a 5-inch or 12.5cm square, – NOT ROUND. A round runza is how they are made in Kansas, not Nebraska! 

Spoon one portion of the filling into the center of each piece. Dampen the edges with water.

Fold the sides in. 

Then fold the top and bottom together and pinch to seal the seams, making your requisite rectangle.

Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner. 

Place seam-side down on the lined baking sheet. I had to do mine in two batches since I was baking in a small oven. Our new kitchen is meant to be ready by this weekend though. 🤞

Let the runzas rise for 20 minutes then brush them with a little milk.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy! 

It's the second Tuesday of the month so, as mentioned above, it's time for my Bread Bakers to share their recipes. As you might have surmised, the theme is stuffed buns! Many thanks to our host, Radha of Magical Ingredients. Check out the links below.

• Custard Buns from A Messy Kitchen
• Ham and Cheese Stuffed Buns from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Hot Dog Flower Buns from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Nebraska Runzas from Food Lust People Love
• Salted Caramel Apple Wreath from Magical Ingredients
• Small Batch Nebraska Runzas from Sneha’s Recipe

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin these Nebraska Runzas!

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Mount Vernon Breakfast Gems #BreadBakers

Slightly sweet and nutty from the addition of grits, these breakfast gems are essentially fluffy cornbread muffins baked from a recipe from Mount Vernon, home of George Washington.

I need to preface this post and recipe with the fact that George and Martha Washington, the first president of the United States and his wife, were in fact enslavers of people. When Washington died in 1799, he owned 123 enslaved people outright. He stipulated in his will that they were to be freed following the death of his wife, Martha. 

The majority of the enslaved population at the estate—153 people at the time of his death—were so-called "dower slaves." These individuals belonged to the estate of Martha's first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. Because Washington did not legally own them, he had no legal authority to free them in his will.

I’ve never been to Mount Vernon but many of the facilities you can tour do seem show the enormous backbreaking work of those people, who made it possible for the plantation to function and be profitable. This includes the kitchen. 

According to the website, “George and Martha Washington welcomed thousands of guests to Mount Vernon and were well known for their boundless hospitality, frequent and memorable parties, and the wide variety of culinary treats served.

This was only possible because of the work of enslaved butlers, housemaids, waiters, cooks, and others.”

Whether or not George Washington actually ate breakfast gems is debatable but we do know from records that his favorite breakfast was hoecakes which are small cornmeal pancakes. He ate them smothered in butter and honey. I think he’d have liked these breakfast gems too which have the same cornbread vibe. 

Back then, a gem pan looked like this:

You can buy them online at Ebay and Etsy but they can be quite costly. I used silicone muffin cups. 

Mount Vernon Breakfast Gems

As mentioned above, this recipe is adapted from one on the Mount Vernon website. The ingredients are the same but I’ve attempted to clarify the sketchy method. For instance, the original gave no prior warning that the egg whites needed to be beaten till stiff, until the instruction to add them. 

Ingredients

1/4 cup or 40g grits

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 cup water

1 cup or 240ml milk

1 cup or 130g cornmeal

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons butter

3 teaspoons baking powder

2 eggs

Method

Preheat your oven to 425°F or 218°C and either line your 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners or use silicone muffin cups. 

Bring a ½ cup or 120ml water to the boil. Add in the grits and salt and cook for a few minutes until thick. Set aside. 

Heat your milk to a simmer. Just as you start to see a little bubble or two, add it to the cornmeal in a large mixing bowl. Stir well to combine. 

Add in the sugar and butter. Stir until the butter is melted and both are fully incorporated.

Add the grits to the cornmeal mixture along with the baking powder. Stir well and set aside to cool. 

Separate the eggs and lightly beat the yolks. 

In a large clean bowl, whisk the whites until stiff peaks form. 

Add the egg yolks to the cornmeal mixture and stir well. 

Gently fold in the egg whites a few spoons at a time until all are folded in.

First addition.

Third and final addition.

Divide your batter between the 12 muffin cups. 

Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes or until the gems are lightly golden brown and a wooden skewer comes out clean. 

Take the pan out of the oven and leave to cool before removing the gems from the pan and cooling further on a wire rack. 

These can be eaten warm or at room temperature. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s Bread Bakers day, when my fellow bloggers and I share recipes on a theme. This month it’s American bread, in recognition of the semiquincentennial. Check out the links below.

• All American Batter Bread with Discard from A Messy Kitchen
• American Parker House Rolls from Sneha's Recipe
• Mount Vernon Breakfast Gems from Food Lust People Love
• Spoon Rolls from Karen's Kitchen Stories

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin these Mount Vernon Breakfast Gems!

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Brown Sugar Lemon Cassava Loaf #BreadBakers

Naturally gluten free, this Brown Sugar Lemon Cassava Loaf bakes up light and fluffy with a lovely crunchy sugar top. It’s great as is or even toasted.

A couple of my fellow food bloggers have introduced me through their recipes to two flours I had never used before, cassava and coconut. No one in my family needs to be gluten free but I do love experimenting with new ingredients. 

Recently I read the fascinating book, Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America and learned even more about the traditional use of cassava in cooking and baking by the indigenous tribes of the Caribbean. 

To quote the Amazon blurb: “Exemplifying how Native foodways can teach us all to connect with the natural world around us, Turtle Island features rich narrative histories and spotlights the communities producing, gathering, and cooking these foods, including remarkable stories of ingenuity and adaptation that capture the resilience of Indigenous communities.” 

It's an amazing read and extremely humbling. There’s so much I didn’t know and still need to learn about this continent, pre-arrival of foreign colonizers.

I was expecting guests for a teatime visit a couple of weeks ago so I decided to give cassava flour a spin. They took the leftovers home with them, one saying that she planned to eat her slices with coffee for breakfast, that’s how well it went over! 

Brown Sugar Lemon Cassava Loaf

Both my husband and I thought the loaf could have been a little sweeter but, as I said, the guests liked it just as it was. If you have a bit of a sweet tooth, use the whole ¾ cup or 150g of brown sugar in the list. Next time I bake this, I plan to. 

Ingredients

1 ½ cups or 180g cassava flour

½ – ¾ cup or 100-150g dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

Zest 1 lemon (save lemon for juicing)

3 eggs, room temperature

½ cup or 120ml canola or other light oil

½ cup or 123g plain full-fat Greek yogurt

Juice 1 lemon (about 3 tablespoons)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Optional but highly recommended for that crunchy top: 2-3 tablespoons turbinado sugar

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and line a loaf pan with baking parchment.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cassava flour, brown sugar, baking powder, sea salt and lemon zest.

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, oil, yogurt, lemon juice and vanilla extract together until smooth.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry mixture and fold until it is just combined but make sure no flour is showing.

Pour the batter into your lined loaf pan. I hold the baking parchment up with clothes pegs which works a treat. You do have to remove them before baking! 

Sprinkle on the turbinado sugar, if using. 

Bake for 45–50 minutes. The edges should be golden brown, and a toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean.

Leave to cool in the pan then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Slice to serve. Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month which means it’s time for my Bread Baker friends to share their bakes. Our theme today is Breakfast Bread! Many thanks to our host Kelly from A Messy Kitchen. Check out the links below.

• Brown Sugar Lemon Cassava Loaf from Food Lust People Love 
• Girelle - Italian Breakfast Pastry from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Greek Yogurt and Blueberry Oat Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Kheema Anda Paratha from Sneha's Recipe
• Sourdough Gingerbread Waffles from A Messy Kitchen
• Sourdough Plum Almond Bread from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Zucchini Cassava Muffins from Passion Kneaded

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Brown Sugar Lemon Cassava Loaf!

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Sprouted Spelt Sourdough Boule #BreadBakers

Crunchy on the outside but tender on the inside, this sprouted spelt sourdough boule is a toothsome loaf full of flavor from both the spelt and sourdough starter.

A fortuitous measuring mistake led to the baking of this lovely loaf! I was in the kitchen making sprouted spelt everything crackers and right off the bat, I added FULLY DOUBLE the amount of water to the spelt flour than I was supposed to. Why? I cannot tell you except that I was a bit distracted, never a good thing when baking. 

So I set that bowl aside and started afresh on the cracker recipe which turned out very tasty, by the way.

I do hate to waste ingredients though so when the enormous cracker was in the oven, I decided to adapt my sprouted spelt boule recipe to make a sourdough loaf. I gotta tell you, it was an excellent decision. We loved this bread! 

Since the flour and water had already had about 35 minutes mixed together, I went with the flow and said to myself, okay, we are starting with an autolyze. An autolyze is when you hydrate the flour ahead of adding the rising agent which allows gluten to begin forming, and creates a smoother, more extensible dough, often reducing the need for extensive kneading.

Then I added in the sourdough starter and left the mixture an additional half hour or so (a step sometimes called fermentolyse, differing from autolyze by the addition of the rising agent, either sourdough starter or yeast) before continuing to mix in the rest of the ingredients. Worry not, full instructions follow below.

Good save, right? Waste not, want not.

Sprouted Spelt Sourdough Boule

If you can’t find sprouted spelt flour, Google offered the following suggestion: “The best substitute for sprouted spelt flour is sprouted whole wheat flour, as it offers a similar nutritional profile, nutty flavor, and baking consistency.” If you can find it, I have at least six other recipes here to use it, from sourdough blini to sweet muffins to artisan yeast bread.

 

Ingredients

1 cup or 240ml warm water

1 1/2 cups or 180g sprouted spelt flour

1 cup or 250g sourdough starter

1 1/2 cups or 188g bread flour

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

Before baking:

Sprinkle of rice flour - optional

 

Essential equipment:

5.5 qt or 5.3L Dutch oven with ovenproof lid or a bread cloche

Lame, razor or very sharp knife for scoring

 

Method

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the water and spelt flour. Mix well. Cover with cling film or a shower cap and set aside for about 45 minutes. 

Add in the sourdough starter and mix again to combine. Cover with cling film or a shower cap and set aside for another 45 minutes. 

Add in the bread flour and salt. Mix well. 

Use a rubber spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl, making sure all the flour has been incorporated.

Knead until the dough is springy and formed a good ball. I use my stand mixer for this because I am a wimp. 

Cover the bowl with cling film or a damp teacloth. Let sit at room temperature for 8-12 hours. 

The longer the better, in my opinion. You can also pop the covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight, after the rise at room temperature.

If you have refrigerated your dough, remove it from the refrigerator and leave to come to room temperature before continuing. 

Once the dough is room temperature and ready to bake, prepare a greased square of baking parchment on a plate. Make the dough into a tight ball and transfer it to the parchment. The parchment isn’t strictly necessary but it will make transferring the risen dough to the Dutch oven easier later.

Cover with a loose towel or oiled cling film and let rise for 1 hour. 

 

When your dough has almost doubled in size, preheat oven to 450°F or 232°C WITH THE COVERED DUTCH OVEN or BREAD CLOCHE INSIDE. 

I have a new toy which is a LeCreuset bread cloche. I had only used it before this from a cold start so I was crossing my fingers it would work for this as well! (Reader, as you can see, it did!) 

 

Once the Dutch oven or cloche is fully heated and the dough is done rising, hold the edges of the parchment paper and carefully place the loaf inside. 

Cut a few slashes in the dough to allow it to rise further as it bakes and to give it a decorative finish. I like to sprinkle the top with rice flour first to give it definition but that’s not necessary. It just looks prettier once baked.

Depending on your oven, let the bread bake with the lid ON for about 20-25 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for another 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. If you are a thermometer-using baker, fully baked, the boule should have an internal temperature of about 190°F or 88°C.

Remove the boule from the oven.

Let it cool completely on a wire rack before slicing. Waiting is the most challenging part of the recipe! It smells sooooooo good. 

Slice to serve. This boule is great as is OR toasted. A smear of butter never goes amiss.

Enjoy!

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s time for my fellow Bread Bakers and I to share our bakes. Our theme is sourdough. Many thanks to our host, Sneha of Sneha’s Recipe. Check out the links below. 

• Overnight Sourdough Sandwich Bread from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Small Sourdough Bread from Sneha’s Recipe
• Sourdough Oat Waffles from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sprouted Spelt Sourdough Boule from Food Lust People Love
• Sweet Potato Sourdough from A Messy Kitchen

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Sprouted Spelt Sourdough Boule!

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