Ensaimada
A bun from Mallorca whose name comes from saïm, the Catalan word for lard. Lard is the compulsory fat here: butter gives a different structure and a different smell. The technique is closer to strudel than to puff pastry — the dough is stretched by hand into a translucent sheet, smeared with lard and rolled into a rope. The second condition is a very long, slow rise: twelve hours somewhere cool, after which each coil triples in size.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Dough 25 min
- First rise 120 min
- Stretching and coiling 40 min
- Overnight rise 720 min
- Baking 30 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneKnead an elastic dough
Mix the flour, water, eggs, sugar, yeast, salt and oil and knead 12 minutes, until smooth and springy. It must be very well developed — you are about to stretch it until it is translucent.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 180 ml water · 2 pcs eggs · 100 g sugar · 20 g fresh yeast · 1 tsp salt · 30 ml oil
Check the windowpane test
Stretch a piece of dough between your fingers: it should form a membrane you can see light through before it tears. If it tears at once, knead another 5 minutes. Without this, stretching on the bench is impossible.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 180 ml water · 2 pcs eggs · 100 g sugar · 20 g fresh yeast · 1 tsp salt · 30 ml oil
Let it rise two hours
Cover and leave 2 hours, until doubled. The dough must be well risen and relaxed — taut, freshly kneaded dough springs back at every attempt to stretch it.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 180 ml water · 2 pcs eggs · 100 g sugar · 20 g fresh yeast · 1 tsp salt · 30 ml oil
Oil the bench and stretch the dough
Divide the dough into 8 equal balls and work with one at a time, keeping the rest under a cloth. Oil the worktop — do not flour it — and stretch the ball with your hands from the centre outwards into a thin sheet of about 30 × 40 cm, until it is nearly translucent. Flour stops the layers sealing, while oil lets the dough slide. All the balls, including spreading and rolling, take about 30–40 minutes.
Ingredients: 150 g lard · 4 tbsp oil
An oiled bench, not floured — and dough nearly translucent.Smear on a thin layer of lard
Smear the soft lard (about an eighth of it per sheet) with your fingers across the whole surface, very thinly. Do not melt it — liquid lard soaks into the dough instead of separating the layers, and it is the lard that creates ensaimada's thread-like structure.
Ingredients: 150 g lard · 4 tbsp oil
Lard soft, not melted — liquid it soaks into the dough.Roll into a thin, long rope
Roll the sheet from the long side into a very thin rope, then gently stretch it longer still. The thinner the rope, the more turns in the coil and the finer the threads in the cut face.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 180 ml water · 2 pcs eggs · 100 g sugar · 20 g fresh yeast · 1 tsp salt · 30 ml oil
Coil loosely with gaps
Wind the rope into a spiral, leaving 1 cm of slack between the turns, and set it straight onto a lined baking tray — 4 coils per tray, well spaced. The dough triples overnight — tightly wound coils fuse into a solid disc and lose the characteristic shape.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 180 ml water · 2 pcs eggs · 100 g sugar · 20 g fresh yeast · 1 tsp salt · 30 ml oil
A centimetre between turns — the dough will triple.Rise overnight and bake briefly
Cover and leave 12 hours somewhere cool (about 18 °C). Bake one tray at a time in a preheated oven, 15 minutes at 190 °C, until pale gold — no darker. Cool and dust heavily with icing sugar, only once cold.
Ingredients: 5 tbsp icing sugar
Before you start
Lard, not butter
Lard has a higher melting point than butter and stays solid longer in the oven, so the layers separate rather than merge. With butter the bun is tasty but less flaky and smells different — the traditional Mallorcan ensaimada is made with lard.
Icing sugar only when cold
Dusted warm it dissolves and soaks in, leaving damp patches. An ensaimada must be completely cold, and there should be enough sugar for the bun to look snowed on — that is part of its identity.
Two days, then only reheated
Ensaimada is best on the first day and still good on the second. After that it dries — put it in an oven heated to 160 °C for 4 minutes to bring back its flakiness.
