Rohrnudeln (Buchteln)

Rohrnudeln are southern German oven buns, and they sit where the sweet main dishes live: Friday lunch, a winter weeknight, a Sunday table when the meat stayed in the larder and the plum butter came out. In Bavaria I call them Rohrnudeln because they go into the Rohr, the oven; across Austria and old Bohemian kitchens you'll hear Buchteln or Wuchteln, filled with Powidl, apricot jam, or sometimes nothing at all. Im Norden anders, im Sueden anders: the north may send a sweet yeast bun to coffee, but the south sets it down as the meal.

The technique is not the filling. It is the crowding. Pack the dough balls tight in a buttered tin so their sides touch before the final rise; trapped against each other, they climb upward, stay pale and soft on the sides, and tear apart in long cottony pieces. Give them too much room and you've baked rolls with crust all around. Fine rolls, wrong dish.

I make the dough soft with milk, egg, butter, and enough kneading that it stretches instead of tearing. The jam must be thick, Powidl is best, because runny jam boils out and glues itself to the tin while the bun sits empty. Vanilla sauce is made on the stove from milk, yolks, sugar, and vanilla. Nicht aus dem Glas. A packet can sweeten milk; it cannot give you a sauce.

Watch the dough, not the clock. It should puff until a fingertip leaves a slow dent, then bake until the tops are golden and the joins still look soft. Das braucht seine Zeit, and then it tears the way it should.