Buffalo horn bread or “Bánh sừng trâu”

When I was a little kid, I remember one of my favorites was “bánh sừng trâu”, i.e buffalo horn bread. To me, having this bread for breakfast like in seventh heaven! The bread is a bit sweet, very good smell of butter, soft, tasty…People call it “bánh sừng trâu” as it reminds the shape of buffalo horn, but nowadays by somehow they still call “crab bread”! But to me, it looks like horns than a crab!

The buffalo horn bread is very popular in Saigon, we can find it at many bakery shop, these days they still create new recipes by adding the filling like – cheese or trendy “salted egg-yolk”. I don’t have the proper recipe from local bakers but as my guess, I should try some recipes for brioches from my study at LCB in Paris.

LCB doesn’t have any recipe, of course, for Buffalo horn bread but instead we have a long list of different brioches, so I just choose one which I found good to create, for the first time, my childhood’s buffalo horn bread. That recipe should require a lot of butter same as croissant.

I prepared actually only three “buffalo horn” bread, the rest of dough I put into a mould

The preparation for buffalo horn bread (10-12 pcs)

Bread flour 500 gr.
Butter 250 gr. ( I used a “douce beurre”, i.e “slightly salted butter”
Egg 6 pcs
Salt 10 gr.
Sugar 60 gr.
Dry yeast 4 gr. or 15 gr. of compressed yeast
Vanilla 5 ml.
Egg wash 1 egg yolk + 1 egg

Bread flour, butter, salt, sugar and dry yeast

Kneading until the dough stops sticking to the mixing bowl

The dough is wet and super soft, I left it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature

The kneading takes around 15 minutes, until the dough stops sticking to the mixing bowl. I left in the kitchen for 30 minutes, made few folds by hands, then keep it in the fridge for overnight. The next day I take out the dough from the fridge, as my first attempt to create the buffalo horn, so I decided to do only three pieces, the rest I just put into the mould for my friend.

How to create the horn, it’s exactly the same procedure as we do the croissant, except these two tails – make them bit longer and fold towards the main body. To be honest I prefer this “horn” shape than the ones we did in Paris – with a little head on the top of the brioche!

The only thing different from croissant is these two little buffalo horns

After 2-hour proofing now the buttery bread is ready for the oven at 170oC

The texture is same as French traditional brioche, but as I used a salted butter so it tastes a little bit nicely salty, buttery and super soft. Next time I may come up with some filling like cheese or ham.This “buffalo bread” is good for breakfast together with hot milk coffee or some cheese or jam spreads!