Milk buns

I'm baking buns and breads these days. Breads and buns are well served as breakfasts and suppers for my elder son. I owe my thanks to my bread maker, which helps me do the kneading and first rise job. Without my BM, I don't think I would make that many buns and breads, because:
- my arms would be really hurt from kneading and there would be no way I could still sit here typing this after all the kneading :).

- I wouldn't have enough time to do all the process as my daily schedule is pretty tight with 2 little kids always needing their mother's attention, and then my work requires time too.

Back to the milk buns. They were so very good. No, not just good. They were amazing. They were soft, fluffy and great-smelling. I don’t think anyone can resist that aroma of newly baked breads and buns. Even when the buns hadn’t been ready to get out of the oven, the wonderful aroma filled up the whole room.

My bread maker my great helper. It was bought at a discounted price

The below recipe is originally from here. It’s indeed a keeper.

Ingredients:

- 150ml milk

- ½ egg (beat an egg and use 1/2)

- 30g caster sugar

- 5g salt

- 250g bread flour

- 5g instant yeast

- 40g unsalted butter, room temperature

I always used butter to grease the pans/tins. But I've just bought this. It makes the greasing become much faster, and I think it helps save money too

Method:

1. In the BM’s pan, put the ingredients in this order: milk, egg, sugar, salt, flour, yeast (yeast should not touch the liquid). Choose “Dough” then let the cycle complete (my BM takes 90 minutes).

2. Punch down the dough to let out the air bubbles. Divide the dough into 7 equal pieces. Let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes.

3. Roll each piece of dough round. Arrange them in a well-greased 20cm round cake tin: one piece of dough in the center, and 6 around. Cover and let the dough proof for about 35-40 minutes.

After 2nd rise...

Some milk ready to be brush over the buns

4. Bake in a preheated oven at 190^oC for 30-35 minutes. My oven seemed to be too hot, so the surface of the buns got pretty brown after 15 minutes. I covered with a sheet of foil and let it be baked for another 15 minutes (30 minutes in total). Now the small buns stick together to make a big bun, which looks like a cute chubby flower. I just wanted to pinch it because it looked so lovely :). By the way, the bun was a bit over-brown, but my family like it that way, because the crust was crispy (thin though), but the inside was still really soft and fluffy, not dry at all.

Cute, cute...

So soft and fluffy and delicious

5. Take the bun out of the tin right away. Let cool on a wire rack.

Update: My younger son, who is quite “hard” on food (mind you, he’s still very little :)), seemed to like this bun too. He ate a couple of slices, which is really a compliment to me :).

Another update: Only one piece of the bun was left the next morning. I ate it and it was surprisingly good with obvious buttery flavor.

Will I bake this again? Definitely yes.

Coffee buns - or Mexican buns

I should pipe the topping on the buns more generously next time

Several months ago, I saw a new shop, named “Pappa Roti – the father of all buns”, in the city where I lived. Every time I passed by, I was attracted by the coffee aroma, but there were always a crowd surrounding the small shop, so I didn’t stop. In a cold winter day earlier this year, seeing that there were not so many customers, I decided to try whatever they were selling at that Pappa Roti shop. Turned out they only sold one kind of buns, called “coffee buns”. The buns tasted so lovely that I returned to the shop pretty often to buy those buns not only for myself but for my kids too (just occasionally for my kids because I don't want them to consume too much coffee).

I had never thought of making the coffee buns, because the buns at Pappa Roti shop were good enough already and they weren’t expensive. Until one day, I saw the recipe in a local magazine for kids (yes, for kids!), and it didn’t seem like a heavy task (it was in the kid magazine anyway :)). The recipe was written by my friend so I asked her all kinds of questions. With her encouragement, I seemed to be determined enough to bake a batch of Mexican buns (as my friend called them and I think that’s the right name). The only obstacle was the time required for the dough to rest and rise. So I chose a hot day to make the buns, hoping that the dough would rise quickly. Unfortunately, a hot day in the summer here also means a humid day. So the dough was ridiculously sticky, though I added more than two tablespoons of flour.

Recipe (written by my friend, published in a local magazine for kids)

Ingredients:

A. Filling: 50g salted butter, cut into 8 small cubes. Keep them in the fridge until ready to use.

B: Coffee Topping:

- 1 large egg, beaten

- 40g icing sugar, sifted

- 65g unsalted butter, softened

- 65g AP flour, sifted

- 15ml coffee (about 5g instant coffee and 1 TBSP hot water)

          Method: Beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add egg and beat until combined. Add flour gradually and beat until well combined. Add coffee and beat well. You’ll get a paste. Spoon it into a pastry bag and refrigerate until ready to use. My friend said you could make the topping ahead and it can be kept in the fridge for 3 days.
          Note: I did this all with a wire whisk, though my friend recommended using a hand mixer.

C: Dough (yields about 8 medium buns)

- 250g bread flour

- 40g caster sugar

- 3g salt

- 5g instant dry yeast

- 30g unsalted butter, softened

- 1 egg, beaten

- 120ml milk

          Method:

1. Combine flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Add butter and combine with your hands.

2. Add egg and milk, knead so everything is well combined. Lightly flour a surface and put your dough on that surface to knead (with light floured hands) until not sticky, smooth and elastic. It took me 30 minutes to knead by hands and resulted in two hurtful arms :(. Put the dough in a large bowl, cover with a damp towel and let it rise for 1-2 hours, until double in size.

Before...

...and after. The dough looked different in colour just because I took the photos in two different places, under two different kinds of light

3. Lightly knead the dough. Divide it into 8 pieces, roll them round like balls. Cover and let them rest for 15 minutes. Flatten each piece, put a salted butter cube in the center, seal and roll them really well again to make sure the butter wouldn’t be leaked during baking. I didn’t seal them well enough so the butter leaked and the buns looked really weird in the oven. Take the topping out of the fridge so it will be softened a little.

4. Preheat oven at 170-180^oC. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Arrange the buns on the tray and spirally pipe the topping on the buns, starting from the center. The topping should cover about half of the bun. Bake for 15-20 minutes until light brown. I baked them at 180C for 22 minutes, turned the tray, then baked for another 5 minutes.

5. Cool on a wire rack. Better serve warm from oven. The buns can be reheated in a preheated oven at 120-150^oC for 5 minutes.

I took this photo next day. The buns were left at room temperature for a day so the topping melted a bit

          My coffee buns were good enough but not as soft as the store-bought buns. Maybe I did not let the dough rise enough :-\. Well, actually I don’t know if there was anything wrong but the buns were eaten up anyway. The problem was that my arms hurt for a couple of days :(. I guess next time I will let the bread maker did the kneading job, stupid me why did I not think of that sooner...

I'm submitting this recipe to Aspiring Bakers #8 - BreadSeduction hosted by Jasmine at Sweetylicious. 

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.