Ham and cheese bun rolls

I had always skipped bread and bun recipes, because the required time for the dough to rest and rise seemed to scare me. With two little kids, I can never make sure that I would have time to shape and/or bake the breads/buns at the exact time the dough doubles in size. And if I cannot shape and/or bake the breads/buns at the exact time, the dough will be spoilt, won’t it?

But this recipe required only 30 minutes for the dough to rest. I had read it many times to make sure it was ONLY 30 minutes, nothing more. And since it was my first time [making buns], I had a bunch of questions. Thanks to very kind Peng @ Peng’s Kitchen, I got my answers. I think I would have never made these lovely buns without her help/advice. Many thanks to Peng.

The buns turned out fabulous. They tasted really great, although the dough-resting time was only half an hour. I made a couple of cheese-only bun rolls for my elder son because he did not like ham. He ate one right away and another for the next day’s breakfast. He said it still tasted really good the next day (we got it microwaved). For the bun rolls with ham, I think they should not go into microwave because the processed meat does not like being microwaved. It [the processed meat] will produce some kind of very unhealthy chemicals, so the ham bun rolls should go to the [convectional] oven if you want to re-heat them.

Just out from the oven. My tray was small so the buns sticked together.

Recipe – adapted from Peng’s Kitchen:

Ingredient (8 buns)

• 300gm bread flour
• 10g instant yeast
• 5g baking powder
• 70g caster sugar
• 20g butter, soften
• 120ml water
• 8pcs ham
• 8 cheese slices
• 1 small egg, lightly beaten

Method

1.     Place flour, yeast, baking powder, sugar & butter into a mixing bowl. Mix lightly with hands till butter is combined with the flour mixture.

2.     Pour in water gradually and mixing at the same time with hands. When all the water was poured in, take the dough out to a slightly floured surface, or a silicone mat, then knead till smooth for about 10mins (I kneaded for 15 minutes).

3.     Divide dough into 60g each. This should depend on the size of the ham pieces. My pieces are quite large, a bit bigger than a sandwich cheese slice. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough into a rectangular shape, a bit larger than the size of your ham pieces. Place ham over the dough and a cheese slice over the ham, and roll up like a swiss roll. Using a dough scrapper, makes criss-cross patterns on the surface. Leave to rest for 30mins.

4.     Brush the rolls with beaten egg. Bake in preheated oven at 160 deg cel for 25-30mins until golden brown.

Note: For the bun rolls without ham, I used 2 cheese slices.

I took the photos the next day without re-heating the buns so they looked a bit dry and we can't clearly see the cheese. But they were still soft and delicious.

I'm submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #8 - Bread Seduction hosted by Sweetylicious.