Brazilian buns

This week my first paying guest arrived (see Elsewoman). His name is Julio, and he immediately asked me - before he'd even tried my cooking - if I would provide dinner for him. Obviously he was putting a trusting faith in the immodest claim in my ad that "I have a very good reputation as a cook".
           Fortunately he does like my food, and it's lovely for me having someone to eat with every night. While he doesn't cook himself, he has worked in a bakery, and when we went shopping last week, he suggested that he could make his aunt's recipe for "condensed milk bread" (though in fact they're buns) - pão de leite condensado. It was a very good thing to do on a horribly cold, wet day.

Pão de leite condensado

Put in the food processor:
2 eggs
1/2 tin sweetened condensed milk
The same amount of warm water
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp salt
Process until combined, then add yeast.
Julio usually uses 1/2 cake of compressed yeast - he sprinkles it over the top of the mixture and leaves it for 5 minutes. But we could only find dried yeast, so we did it this way:
Dissolve 1 and 1/2 tsps sugar in a cup of warm water.
Sprinkle over 1 slightly rounded Tbsp active dried yeast (do not stir) and leave for 10 minutes.
Add to egg mixture.

In a large bowl, mix
500g high grade (bread) flour
with the egg and yeast mixture to make a fairly stiff dough.
Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour. (We resorted to covering the bowl with plastic wrap and putting it in a sinkful of warm water with the chopping board on top.)

Heat oven to 220C and oil an oven tray.

Oil your hands and form the risen dough into neat round buns - it makes about 12 - and spread them out on the tray.
Leave to rise again for 30 minutes
(the top of the stove is a good place, because it's warm).

Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden-brown on top.
When the buns come out of the oven, the correct way to finish them is to paint them with melted butter and dust them with powdered parmesan cheese. I didn't have any, and in any case I thought I'd prefer mine just plain. We tried putting grated cheddar on some for Julio, but it didn't stay on very well. Still, they were delicious that day, and next morning they were wonderful cut in half and toasted - they tasted like brioche.