In a recent thread on My Nebras­ka Kitchen, the issue of how to get seeds to stick to bread came up.

So, today I tried an experiment.

I made a batch of Chica­go-style hot dog buns (the KAF recipe), mak­ing 12 buns. (We like our buns a lit­tle small­er than what the recipe sug­gests.) I divid­ed them into six pairs, and each pair got a dif­fer­ent method for stick­ing pop­py seeds to the bun:

• Water
• Seeds on the bottom
• Oil
• Egg White
• Milk
• Hon­ey (dilut­ed with water)

All six treat­ments were done right after shap­ing and allowed to final proof for about an hour. I left the ones with the seeds on the bot­tom sit that way for about 45 min­utes, then rolled them over so the seeds were on top. Here’s how they looked just before going into the oven:

Here’s how they looked when they came out of the oven. (The order I list­ed them in above is not the order they are on the pan.):

I let them cool for an hour and then tried to see how eas­i­ly the seeds came off each type. So, how well did each method work?

The oil treat­ment fared the worst. I can brush the seeds off fair­ly easily.

The oth­ers all did bet­ter, I’d rank the ‘seeds on bot­tom’ and ‘hon­ey’ meth­ods as being the most stuck down, with the oth­er three just slight­ly behind them.

There are a few oth­er meth­ods I might try anoth­er time, but for now I’d rec­om­mend using some hon­ey and water to stick your seeds down.

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