Chocolate buns wool balls

Ingredients for 5 servings:

• 80 ml milk, lukewarm
• ¼ cube of fresh yeast or 1 tsp of dry yeast
• 30 g sugar
• 1 egg(s), size M
• 90 ml cream
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 300 g wheat flour (preferably half and half, types 550 and 405)
• Butter for the mold
• 2 tbsp milk for brushing
• 75 g dark chocolate coating or 50 g dried cranberries

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Rest time approx. 3 hours 15 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 20 minutes; Total time approx. 4 hours 35 minutes

airy, light yeast pastry with an eye-catching effect

For a loaf pan approximately 30 x 12 cm. Use all ingredients at room temperature. Mix a starter dough from milk, yeast, and sugar and let it rest, covered, for 15 minutes until the yeast is fully active. Add the egg, heavy cream, salt, and flour, and knead for several minutes in a food processor/Thermomix/using the dough hook of a mixer until the dough is smooth. Briefly form the dough into a ball on the countertop, making sure the surface is stretched. Place the dough ball in a bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place. Simply turn on the oven light to ensure it reaches just the right temperature. Proving time: approximately 1 hour; the dough ball should definitely double in size. Turn the dough back onto the countertop and gently flatten it slightly. If the surface (which was at the bottom of the bowl) is sticky, you can gently fold the dough a few times. Please do not add any more flour or knead it! Divide the dough into 5 equal pieces and shape each one into a ball, using as few movements as possible, while giving the surface of the balls some tension. Place the 5 balls, leaving some space between them, on a floured board, covered, and let rise in the oven (only turn on the light) for about 1 hour, until the balls have doubled in size. During this time, roughly chop the dark chocolate coating or cranberries with a sharp knife. Carefully grease a loaf pan (approx. 30 x 12 cm) with butter. Remove the covered board from the oven. Carefully place a ball of dough upside down on the countertop (do not flour!) and gently roll it out with a rolling pin into an elongated oval “rag.” Total length: approximately 30 cm. Now it’s difficult to describe, but I hope you can still imagine it: Press the edges of the rags slightly against the countertop so that the dough stays in place and doesn’t shrink. Now, using a straight dough scraper or a sharp knife, cut the dough half furthest from your belly, a few millimeters apart, to create many long, narrow strips, like the fringes on a rug. The end result should resemble the palm of your hand with about 20 thin fingers. Place 1/5 of the chopped chocolate or cranberries in the center of the uncut half, leaving a border of about 2 cm on the right, left, and bottom. Carefully roll the dough from this end toward the “fringes” (like a roulade). Fold the edges of the uncut half in slightly so that the filling doesn’t fall out. Simply roll up completely, starting from the belly, until the ends of the thin strips are on the underside of the roll. Repeat this process with the remaining 4 dough balls, one after the other. Place the rolls next to each other in the greased loaf pan, leaving some space between them, cover the pan, and let them rise in the oven (just turn on the oven light) for about 1 hour. At the end of the rising time, the dough pieces will fill the entire loaf pan. Remove the pan from the oven and preheat it to 170°C (convection oven will dry out the chocolate rolls too much!). Brush the dough pieces lightly with room-temperature milk, then transfer the pan to the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes, then let stand for another 2 minutes in the switched-off oven. Remove from the oven and immediately turn out of the pan onto a wire rack, turn over, and let cool. A nut-nougat spread, a cinnamon-sugar mixture, plum jam, or something else would certainly be suitable as a filling. It could also be imagined as a savory version with smoked salmon cream cheese, garlic butter, or ham and cheese, although in that case I would reduce the sugar to 5g and slightly increase the salt.