Banh mi sandwiches are SO yummy! They are made with Vietnamese baguettes filled with savory meat and pickled vegetables and herbs. I have shared recipes here before for Caramelized Pork Belly Banh Mi and these amazing Marinated Tofu Banh Mi sandwiches.
Traditional Vietnamese banh mi rolls are made similarly to other rolls but with some rice flour added. It is my understanding that most people even in Vietnam don’t make these at home, but buy them from a commercial bakery. I have tried a few different recipes that use some rice flour and none of the result have really been that close to the real thing.
This recipe doesn’t use rice flour. It it more of a standard bread dough, slightly enriched with an egg and a bit of oil. Nothing is quite as good as the real thing, but these rolls have nice texture and they work well for this kind of sandwich that needs to stand up to juicy meat and pickled vegetables.
I do bake these using a steam baking setup with a steam pan/pizza steel to get more rise and extra crunch to the outside of the rolls. You can use a steam pan without a pizza steel if you don’t have one.
Banh Mi Rolls
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups water give or take a little
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp instant yeast
- 4 cups bread flour spooned and leveled or 500g
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 large egg
Instructions
- Combine everything in a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix on medium low until the dough comes together into a ball. Test the dough with a wet hand to see how stiff it is. If it is too stiff, add a tbsp of water at a time while mixing until it is slack and smooth. If the dough feels super sticky and loose, add a tbsp of flour at at time until the dough has a good consistency. When you turn the mixer off, it should slump a bit but not be completely loose.
- Test the dough with the window pane test. Continue kneading until it passes. Shape into a rough ball and place in a greased bowl or dough bucket and cover while it rises. Allow to rise until doubled 1-2 hours depending on temperature.
- Preheat oven to 425 with steam tray and pizza steel if using. Divide into 6 pieces and shape into batard shapes. Allow to rest 5 minutes then shape into baguettes. There are great youtube videos on how to shape dough you can check out if you haven't made these shapes before.
- Allow to rise again on a floured couche or on parchment covered by plastic wrap sprayed with oil spray. Allow to rise until almost doubled again. 45 min – 1 1/4 hours.
- Slash a cut at 45 degrees in the top of each roll. Pour boiling water into the steam tray and place the rolls on the pizza steel, or bake them on the back of a cookie sheet on parchment paper. Spray the rolls with a spray bottle of water. Allow to bake 1 minute and spray quickly again. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the steam tray if it still has water in it.
- Continue baking for another 10-12 minutes or until the rolls are deep golden brown and baked to at least 200 degrees inside. Cool on a cooling rack.