Tomato and Ricotta Pesto Pull-apart Buns

Tomato and Ricotta Pesto pull-apart buns. This easy bread dough has no eggs and no butter, making it the perfect easy dough. It is rolled out and filled with a tomato and ricotta pesto mixture and parmesan cheese, then rolled up and cut into buns and baked into perfect pull apart buns. These buns are great alongside a soup or as a delicious easy snack.

Happy Sunday! I hope things are nicer where you are than where they are here - things are a bit gross and grey, but I have a big pot of soup on the stove which I am going to serve with these Tomato and Ricotta Pesto pull-apart buns!

I have a bunch of bun / roll recipes on this site, and for the most part, they use my brioche bun dough as a base. The brioche is great, but because it is an enriched dough and requires the butter to be incorporated in when it is room temperature, it is a little harder to make by hand, and uses more ingredients than your standard bread. I know that butter and eggs can be a little harder to find in the supermarket at the moment, so I wanted to develop a bread base that doesn’t use either and can be made - instead it relies on milk and olive oil for softness, and can be made much more easily by hand. I also scaled down my regular recipe a bit - this makes 12 petite rolls instead of 12 large mamas, although you can roll it however you like!

This would work well as a basic dough for a whole bunch of things. I turned it into some super simple pull-apart buns which I filled with a tomato ricotta pesto and some parmesan cheese. We’ve eaten these a bunch this week while I was recipe testing the dough base, and they are great as is, or also work perfectly as an accompaniment to a meal.

I filled this dough with my fave pesto from Filippo Berio - their tomato ricotta! I love all their pestos, but I think this one might just have to be my favourite. It is smooth and creamy in taste, and well balanced from the ricotta, and the tomato flavour really shines through. It is made with cashew nuts so it is a little more mellow than some of their other pestos, and I just love it so much. It would have been great on its own but I threw a little parmesan cheese in here too because I really can’t pass up cheesy rolls - any cheese that you have on hand would work great, or just the pesto is yum too. Happy rolling! x

A few wee tips:

• This makes about 12 rolls. I used a small-ish skillet because I really wanted to shoot in it, then added the extra ones into a little pie pan and baked them off separately. These would work great spaced out in a 10” skillet, or you could do them in two smaller round cake pans.

• Fill these with whatever you like!

• I used Olive oil in the dough, because I love the flavour, but feel free to use a neutral oil, particularly if you are going a sweet direction with these.

• You can either rise the dough at room temp, or do a fridge rise for 3 hours or up to overnight!

• If you want to make a few bigger rolls, roll the dough to a width of 16” - you will probably get 8 or 9 from this.

• You can do the dough by hand if you like - you will need to knead it for about 10 minutes until it is soft and smooth.

Thank you so much to Filippo Berio for sponsoring this post! All opinions are my own.

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Tomato and Ricotta Pesto Pull-apart Buns

• Author: Erin
• Prep Time: 45 minutes
• Cook Time: 45 minutes
• Total Time: 90 minutes plus rising time
• Yield: 12 small buns 1x

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Description

Tomato and Ricotta Pesto pull-apart buns. This easy bread dough has no eggs and no butter, making it the perfect easy dough. It is rolled out and filled with a tomato and ricotta pesto mixture and parmesan cheese, then rolled up and cut into buns and baked into perfect pull apart buns. These buns are great alongside a soup or as a delicious easy snack.

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Ingredients

Bread Dough

• 220g whole milk, lukewarm
• 1 Tbsp granulated sugar
• 8g (2 tsp) active, dry yeast
• 400g all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 60g Olive Oil - I used Robusto from Filippo Berio

Filling

• 1 Jar Filippo Berio Tomato Ricotta Pesto
• 50g parmesan cheese, finely grated
• Egg wash - 1 egg whisked with 1 tsp water
• Pretzel salt to finish (optional)

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Instructions

BREAD DOUGH

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the lukewarm milk, sugar, and yeast, and leave to stand for 5-10 minutes or until foamy.
2. Add the flour, pepper, salt, and oil, and mix on low speed until the dough comes together. Continue to mix for a further 10-12 minutes until the dough is soft and smooth, and when a little is stretched, you can see light through it (the window pane test).
3. Shape the dough into a ball and place into a bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot to rise for 60 to 90 minutes, or until doubled in size, or in the fridge for a cold rise (see notes).

FILLING AND ASSEMBLY

1. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape into a rectangle. Roll the dough into a long thin rectangle approximately 24” x 10” (60x25cm). If the dough seems to be wanting to snap back, leave it to sit for 5 minutes to relax before continuing to roll.
2. Spread the surface of the dough with the Filippo Berio Tomato and Ricotta Pesto, and sprinkle with the parmesan cheese. Starting with the long side of the dough, roll up into a tight spiral.
3. Line a 10” skillet or cake pan (see notes) with parchment paper. Using a sharp knife, trim the ends of the roll to make them neat if you like (optional step), then cut the roll into 1 1/2” (4cm) buns. Arrange in the pan, leaving a little room between.
4. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot to rise for 30 to 40 minutes, until puffy and a small indentation is left when poked gently with your finger.
5. While the buns are rising, preheat the oven to 350°f / 180°c.
6. Egg wash the buns and sprinkle with pretzel salt if desired. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.
7. Store leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature. Rewarm briefly in the microwave before eating.

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Keywords: pesto, bread, filippo berio, pull-apart bread