Finally a well-tested recipe!

I have stopped blogging for few weeks but not gone for sure. I definitely did not stop baking.. that will never happen. From my last post, I was very very eager to have a good bread recipe that I can constantly fall back on. I have a few recipe books on bread and unfortunately they are all in Chinese. Don't ask me why I bought them all in Chinese but I love flipping the pages just looking at the lovely buns.
I plucked up the courage to explore one of the recipe from Carol's Second Book for Beginners and following Gene's step by step tutorial on how to shape buns, I made the buns and it was good! So good that I encored the recipe twice with different shaping techniques.
Yay!!! I am a happy because my boy loves it and we get to eat healthy home-made bread every morning.
Next up is to attempt to succeed in TZ bread/buns and then yogurt buns. :)

Bread (recipe from Carol's Second Book for Beginners)

270g bread flour
30g cake flour (this is the secret to soft bread)
30g sugar
1/2 tsp instant yeast
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg (50g without shell)
30g butter
150ml milk

How?
- Put in all the wet ingredients first; milk, egg (lightly beaten).
- Add in bread flour and cake flour (covering the wet ingredients) followed by sugar.
- Make a small hole in the flour and put in the yeast. Cover it with flour.
- Press the 'Dough' function and let the machine do the work. It took my BM250 1hr 30 minutes to finish the dough (including proofing time).
- Remove the dough from the BM, give it a few punches to release the air.
- Divide the dough equally into 50g - 60g and roll them into smooth ball.
- Cover with clingwrap or clean towel and let it rest for 15 minutes.
- Shape accordingly. I sprayed my shaped buns with some water and then let it proof (uncovered) for 45 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 170C. Before placing the buns into the oven, brush egg wash over them. Bake the buns for 12 - 15 minutes.
- Cool before storing them in airtight container. Buns will remain soft for up to 2 days.

The last bread that I made, I used my loaf pan and cover the top with a baking sheet (like Pullman tin) to make it a loaf. Teehee..make do with what I have at home.

Breads, breads and more breads

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” ― James Beard

Truth to be told, I have failed countless time in bread making BUT I WILL NOT GIVE UP! Sometimes the result is good, sometimes using the same recipe it will be really really bad. When I say bad, it means really bad. Hard and taste weird. Is it too much to ask for a bread recipe that can yield soft-textured bread that can last 2 days, max?!?

I've tried tangzhong method - the dough turn out to be too sticky to be handled by hand so only loaf bread can be produced. Recently I am using a new bread recipe that uses bread flour with some cake flour. Surprisingly, the result was good. However, there could be problem with proofing because the bread turns out soft but taste weird. I could still taste yeast in them. Is it normal?

2 days ago, I tried a recipe from Carol's Book 1. Pretty similar to what I have been using but as usual with me, I added 30g of wholemeal flour that could be one of the factor my bread was super hard! Another factor was that the bread was done baking at 12am and I was very tired that night. I decided not to wait for them to cool down so I popped them right back to the oven, which is still hot and not cooled down yet. You've guessed it right..the bread came out hard as rock next morning! Regretted big time..give myself a kick at the back. Psshh..

Nevertheless, I will be trying again tonight. Am determine to succeed shaping buns.

Psst.. I have also recently read up on making sourdough bread. The need to cultivate my own started prompted me to start one last night. I can't wait to go back tonight to see if it is alive!

Korean Sesame Tapioca Mochi Bread

The Korean mochi bread was a craze months ago. I can still remember when we were all part of the Munch Ministry Facebook group, everyone was rushing to the Korean minimart to get a box of the premix. Not sure if this is the cause of islandwide out of stock scene for this premix! Haha...

I bought myself 2 boxes of the bread mix a month ago when I was at Tampines One for dinner. Only when we reached home, I knew each box comes with 2 packet of bread mix which means I now have 4 packets = 4x to bake this. Zzzz.. luckily each packet only yield 10 mochi bread and we can easily finish them between me, the husband and my youngest son who eat everything mummy bake or cook. ;)

Korean Sesame Tapioca Mochi Bread (yield 10 mochi bread)

- 1 packet of bread mix (250g each packet)

- 1 egg

- 90ml milk or water

How?
- In a bowl, lightly beat egg and add in milk.
- Put in a packet of premix.

- Mix well until dough is form and it no longer stick to your hand.

- Divide dough into portion of 40g each and shape into balls.

- Place them 2 inches apart on lined baking sheet.

- Let it rest for 15 minutes.
- Before placing it into preheated oven, spray the top of the shaped dough with some water (the mochi will have a crispy top).

- Bake for 30 minutes.

This mochi bread is best eaten fresh from the oven. Heat it up lightly if you leave it to the following day.

My verdict of this: crispy on the outside, chewy inside.

You can add in filling of your choice; red bean paste or chocolate chips or even dried fruits like raisins or cranberries to give it a different twist.

Coffee Buns

Roti boy craze started in KL many years back. I can remember the super super long queue at KLCC and One Utama. Slowly, the fad dies off (just like how bubble tea was as well).

I introduced coffee bun to Zach last year and he is HOOKED! I know.. a 5 year old boy hooked to coffee be it buns, sweets or ice coffee drink from Starbucks and Coffee Bean *guilty*

He saw me baked many different type of buns every week and each time he will asked "Mummy, are you making coffee buns for me?" My reply "Next time okay Zach? Coffee buns need many hours and is very difficult. Mummy promise." The day finally came! I woke up earlier than usual yesterday (being a Sunday) because the Husband was working overnight and we would not be going out for breakfast. I am thankful I have all the ingredients on hand, so no rushing out to stock up. :) I Googled for coffee bun and picked Grace's Kitchen Corner recipe. Feeling excited, I felt it will be nice to include the filling as well. No regrets because it gives the bread some moist to it so it is not very dry.

Second proofing - still unsure why I can never get a nice round-shaped buns

Coffee Buns (recipe from Grace's Kitchen Corner)

Dough
250g bread flour
38g caster sugar
3g salt
4g yeast
1/2 beaten egg
135g fresh milk* (I replaced this with coffee flavored milk)

Bun filling
100g butter*(softened to room temperature)
35g brown sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

* I felt using salted butter for the filling will be the best combination

Topping
50g butter
40g* icing sugar(I reduced this to 30g icing sugar)
38g beaten eggs (approx. 2 medium sized eggs)
50g plain flour
1 tsp granulated coffee powder

How?
- Prepare the bun filling & topping first.
- Filling:

• Using an electric mixer, cream butter and brown sugar until light and pale in color
• Add in vanilla extract and mix well
• Place the butter mixture into fridge for it to set.
• Divide it to 10 equal portions (I use a small ice cream scoop)

- Topping:

• Whisk softened butter with icing sugar until combined.
• Gradually add in beaten eggs and coffee mixture. The batter will look curdled but don't worry. It will be fine after adding plain flour.
• Mix until well incorporated. Pour into piping bag and keep in fridge until ready to use.

- Dough

• Using breadmaker (Function 8), add in all the wet ingredients followed by dry ingredients (do note that do not add in butter at this point.
• When the dough is smooth, add in butter and let the machine knead the dough until it is ready to proof.
• At this juncture I stopped the machine and remove the dough.
• Divide the dough into 10 equal portion (approximately 50g each) and shape them into round balls.
• Let it rest for 15 minutes.
• Roll-out each dough and add the filling. Seal tightly else the filling will ooze out during baking.
• Place each doughs on baking tray about 2 inches apart from each other.
• Cover dough with cling wrap and proof for 60 minutes.
• Pre-heat oven to 200C 10 minutes before the final proof is done.
• Pipe the topping to the dough in spiral form.
• Bake for 12 minutes.

Preparing the topping

The result of this bun? Soft coffee-flavored bread with crispy crust! Love it..

Ham & Cheese Bread Cup

Post-Christmas..I'm sure many of you would have left-over of turkey and ham. Well, we didn't have turkey but plenty of ham left. Beside having them with my favorite instant noodles, decided to bake ham & cheese bread. Munch Ministry site has been popping with a lot of similar bread but in cups. I bought some pretty cupcake liners from Taobao spree earlier and this is a good chance to put them at use.

I picked a recipe from this book and had my friend helped to translate it to English for me. This book uses tangzhong (a mixture of bread flour with liquid cooked over stove until it is 65C).

Adding tangzhong into bread helps to make it soft & fluffy! Apparently if you get the tz cooked right the bread remain soft for days.

Ham & Cheese bread in cup

Tangzhong

50g bread flour

250g milk/water or 50:50 water & milk

To prepare tangzhong, combine bread flour and milk into a saucepan and cook over low fire. Keep stirring until mixture thicken and trailing lines are formed. Temperature of the mixture should be 65c hence the name 65c tangzhong.

Dough

540g bread flour

86g sugar

8g salt

11g instant yeast

86g egg

59g dairy whipped cream

54g milk

9g milk powder

184g tangzhong

49g unsalted butter

How?
- Using your bread maker (you can still follow these steps if you are using a mixer or hand), add all wet ingredients first - milk, tangzhong,egg, whipped cream.
- Follow by all the dry ingredients - flour, milk powder, sugar, salt & yeast. It's very important to place both salt and yeast to be far apart.
- Knead until dough is form. Using the bread maker it'll take approximately 10 minutes. Add in butter and continue kneading.
- Your bread is ready for proofing when you have achieved the window-pane effect on the dough. Proof the dough for 60 minutes covered with a piece of damp cloth or clingwrap.
- At the end of proofing, your dough should be at least double in size. Punch out air from the dough and gv it a few quick knead.
- Divide the dough into small rounds of 50g - 60g depending on how big is the cupcake liner used. Alternatively, you can shape the dough any way you like, wrapped, twist or rolled.
- Place shaped dough in the cupcake liner and put any topping of your choice. For this, I used honey baked ham with cheese slices.
- Once done, let the shaped dough do its last proofing for 45 minutes.
- Preheat oven at 170C and bake bread for 25 minutes.
- Store in airtight container when bread has completely cooled down.

Baking in progress

Bread in loaf tin

Ham & Cheese bread

Nutella Swirl Rolls

Inspired from cinnamon roll I made these Nutella Swirl Rolls. I'm not a fan of cinnamon. Hah..
I've actually attempted the Hokkaido Milk loaf recipe countless times but I've only succeeded once! *sad*
This time round I was very very careful with the ingredients measurement and steps. Followed them to the T!
I'm glad I had the courage to try again because the bread went very well.



First time able to shape into nice balls. ^_^



I think I've overloaded my pan. After 20mins it's too tight for the bread. Oops..
Nutella Swirl Roll (dough adapted from Christine Ho - *I halved the recipe because we can't finish such big loaf)
540g bread flour
86 g caster sugar
8 g salt
9 g full cream milk power
11 g instant dried yeast
86 g whisked egg (about 2 eggs)
59 g whipping cream (*I omitted this and replace it with milk instead)
54 g milk
184 g tangzhong (50g of bread flour + 250g of water/milk and cook over low fire)
49 g unsalted butter, melted (* I used salted butter and reduce the amount of salt above. Agaration method)
How?
- Put all wet ingredients (milk, cream and tangzhong) into bread maker follow by dry ingredients (salt, sugar, bread flour and yeast).
- Set bread maker to Dough function (I am using Kenwood so it is Function 8).
- At 1:23 minutes, add in melted butter.
- At the end of the dough function (dough should rise to double or even triple in size), remove and place on cleaned floured surface.
- Deflate the dough by giving it a few kneads or punch. Do not over-knead or the bread will turn out hard.
- Divide into 3 equal portion, cover with clingwrap and rest for 15 minutes.
- Then shape the bread - at this juncture, you may add any ingredients you want. I rolled them up into rectangular shape and spread nutella on them and roll it.
- Let the dough rise for 1 hour. During the last 10 minutes, pre-heat oven to 170degree.
- Before putting it into oven, brush with whisked egg yolk.



I must say this is a very aromatic bread..the smell of Nutella with
freshly baked bread makes me hungry! I can't wait for it to cool down before chomping 4 pieces..haha
Note:
When placing dry ingredients, be sure that the salt and yeast is placed far apart from each other and yeast not to touch the wet ingredients.