Buchty – Czech Sweet Filled Buns

Come try a real Czech classic: ceske buchty with a sweet filling! You are welcome to join me at the table, but hurry because these buchty always disappear quickly.

➜ What are buchty?

Czech buchty are oven-baked fluffy buns made of yeast dough that contain a sweet filling. Their texture resembles French brioches a bit.

Typical fillings include poppy seed, tvaroh (farmers' cheese in the USA), or plum jam. Freshly baked buns are brushed with melted butter and rum, which gives them a heavenly buttery taste.

Buchty buns, just like kolache, are one of the traditional representatives of Czech sweet pastries. They are sold in bakeries, made by families at the weekend, and served with coffee or tea.

➜ Pronunciation

So that you can hear how the word buchty is pronounced in Czech, I have recorded a short audio clip of pronunciation. The first word is "buchty" and the second is "české buchty," where the word "české" means Czech.

For clarification, you can remember:

• Buchta = 1 piece (singular)
• Buchty = 2 and more pieces (plural).

Buchty pastries belong to the classic old Bohemian recipes that our great-grandmothers used to make. However, because the Czech lands were for centuries part of the Habsburg monarchy, which occupied a large part of central Europe, the buns are also well-known among our contemporary neighbors.

The other names for Czech buchty are Buchteln (Austria, Germany), buhtli or bukty.

➜ Buchty and cesky Honza

Just so you know, buchty are iconic food that accompanies the most famous Czech fairy tale character: a young man named Český Honza.

Honza is an inherently lazy boy who spends his childhood in a cottage lying on a stove (in old Czech houses, the stove also functioned as a fireplace and was often slept on). When he reaches his bachelor years, he gets up from the stove and ventures out into the world to learn something new.

To help Honza thrive outside, his mother bakes him buchty for the journey. Honza then shares these buchty with other fairy tale characters he meets on the road. In the end, he usually kills a dragon and saves and marries a princess.

Back to the kitchen, let's see how you can bake delicious Czech buchty at home!

➜ Ingredients

What else you need:

• Unsalted butter; melted. To brush the buchty from all sides while putting them in a baking tray.
• Unsalted butter and rum; to brush freshly baked buchty buns. Rum: Czech classic is "tuzemák" or "Božkov". If you are based in the US, I recommend Kirkland spiced rum (available at Costco) or Austrian Stroh 54 – these types taste similar to Czech "tuzemák" rum.
• Powdered sugar to dust the baked buchty

✅ You’ll find the exact amount of ingredients below in the recipe card, which you can also print out.

Sweet fillings

Next, you will need at least one kind of sweet filling for the buchty. Here are some typical Czech fillings for sweet pastries:

• Cheese filling (made with Czech tvaroh or Farmer's cheese)
• Homemade poppy seed filling
• Sweet cabbage filling (a vintage Czech recipe!)

Alternatively, use the fillings you're used to when baking. Apricot jam, for example, is popular.

➜ Instructions with photos

STEP 1: Heat the milk so that it is lukewarm but not hot. Pour 1/2 cup milk into a cup, add a teaspoon of sugar, add active dry yeast, and stir.

Leave it in a warm place until small bubbles form on the surface of the activated yeast. This takes about 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt the butter and let it cool down; it can't be hot.

STEP 2: In a large mixing bowl, place the flour, sugar, the rest of the lukewarm milk, melted butter, a pinch of salt, and an egg. Add milk with activated yeast.

STEP 3: Make a smooth dough.

Start stirring the ingredients with a fork a wooden spoon; when combined, dump the mass on the work surface. Knead the dough properly. It requires a bit of physical effort to make the dough smooth and slightly sticky. It takes about 10 minutes.

If the dough is too sticky during processing, add a little flour.

STEP 4: Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

This works for me perfectly: Place a pot of hot water in the bottom of your turned-off oven. Put the bowl of kneaded dough on a medium rack. The bowl should not be placed immediately above the pot of hot water but rather somewhere in the corner. Close the oven and let the dough rise for one hour. It rises like crazy in this moist and warm environment!

⤍ Learn how to make dough rise in the oven.

STEP 5: Divide the dough into approximately equal-sized pieces. If you have a kitchen scale, weigh each piece of dough per bun to 3 ounces (85 grams). Roll each piece with a rolling pin into a patty.

The other method (without a scale) is as follows: Roll out the dough on the worktop roughly into a rectangular shape. The dough should be about as thick as a straw.

Using a pastry cutter or knife, divide the rolled-out dough into squares or rectangles approximately 4x4 inches (10x10 cm) in size; place about one tablespoon of filling in the middle of each square.

STEP 6: Fold the edges of the dough over the filling and seal well. Finally, gently roll the finished bun between your palms to get a regular shape.

STEP 7: Grease a baking dish about 13x9 inches (33x23 cm) with butter. Melt 1/3 stick of butter (37 g) in a saucepan and set aside to cool. Brush the baking tray with it.

Place the prepared buns one at a time, seam-side down, in the baking dish, brushing each side with melted but not hot butter.

Keep going until you've used up all the dough.

STEP 8: Finally, brush the buchty bun tops with the remaining butter.

STEP 9: Bake in a preheated oven at 325°F (165°C) for about 40 minutes, until golden brown.

STEP 10: Melt two tablespoons of butter (25 g), add two tablespoons of rum, and mix. Once the buns are fresh out of the oven, brush their surface generously with the butter-rum mixture.

➜ Serving

Let the buchty cool, dust with powdered sugar, and serve! They are best served still a bit warm with an afternoon cup of coffee or tea.

You can also bake them for a gathering with friends. If you wanted to bring something typically Czech, buchty bread would be the ideal choice!

➜ Cook's Tips

• This recipe makes about 9-12 buchty buns. They should fit in a baking dish measuring approximately 13x9 inches.
• The fillings for the buchty always have to be at room temperature. A filling that is either too cold (e.g., made from cottage cheese taken out of the fridge shortly before preparation) or too hot (made from ground poppy seeds) could ruin the yeast dough!
• Instead of butter, you can brush the buchty buns with melted pork lard during preparation.

More Czech sweet pastries:

• Vanocka – sweet Christmas braided bread, also known as houska
• Mazanec – Easter bread with almonds and raisins
• Apple strudel – an easy recipe