a millygram of sugar

And we're back! What was supposed to be a short break from the kitchen to prepare for my wedding ended up getting extended by another 3 months thanks to an unexpected (but not unwelcome!) pregnancy. If you ask me, it should be called all-day sickness rather than morning sickness. I must have memorised my toilet bowl's every contour in those few weeks. The only thing that got me through was knowing that my suffering meant my baby's continued survival. 

Well, thankfully, I've since reached the 2nd trimester and while I'm horrified to see my weighing scale flash numbers I've never seen before in all my life, I'm glad that the nausea has mostly abated and that I'm back to loving food again--particularly the sweet kind, to the dismay of my elf who jokingly predicted that our child is going to be born with dental caries. (As if it dares.) And so, in honour of my bun in the oven, I hauled out my dusty kitchenaid and activated my oven (the real one) to make these coffee buns.

Mexican Coffee Buns (makes 10 buns)

(adapted from Kitchen Corner)

Ingredients

(for the dough)

250g bread flour

38g caster sugar

3g salt

4g instant yeast

1/2 beaten egg

135g fresh milk

30g unsalted butter, softened

(for the filling)

140g salted butter, cold (cut into 10 cubes, each weighing 14g)

(for the topping)

50g unsalted butter, softened

40g icing sugar

38g beaten egg (slightly less than 1 egg)

1 tsp granulated coffee dissolved in 1 tsp of water (I used decaffeinated coffee)

1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

50g plain flour

Directions

• (for the topping)
• Beat the butter and the icing sugar until fluffy.
• Gradually add in the beaten egg, and then the coffee, mixing well in between.
• Add in the flour and cinnamon powder and mix until well combined.
• Place mixture in a small piping bag and refrigerate.
• (for the dough)
• In a mixing bowl fitted with a dough hook attachment, add the bread flour, sugar, salt, yeast, egg and milk and knead on slow speed.
• When ingredients are well-incorporated, add in the butter and continue mixing for about 30min until dough is smooth and elastic and not sticky.
• Divide the dough into 10 portions (by weight) and let it rest on a baking tray for 15min.
• Roll out each dough portion into a flat disc, place a cube of salted butter (the filling) in the centre. Seal it up tightly. (Make sure the edges of the dough are properly sealed otherwise the filling will ooze out, as some of mine did.)
• Place the filled dough balls back onto the baking tray, shaping them to be as round as possible, and spacing them at least 2-3inches apart Lightly cover with clingwrap and allow to rise for about 50-60min.
• Remove piping bag filled with topping from refrigerator. Snip off the end of the piping bag and pipe out the topping in a spiral pattern onto the dough. (As in the picture above.)
• Preheat oven to 200°C in the meantime.
• Bake buns for about 12-15min.

This bread brings back fond memories of the time my elf and I first started dating. We were celebrating my birthday for the first time as a couple and the restaurant we went to served the most delicious spinach parmesan bread. I remember thinking I would love to try my hand at making some one day and so here I am, 8 years later, doing just that.

looking less green in the glow of the golden hour

My version turned out slightly tougher and chewier than the original (at least from what I remember) but my elf really liked it. He says that's how real bread should be. (What?! Japanese soft fluffy milk bread rox4eva, hello?) That being said, it smelled heavenly and the flavour was great too. Pile on a slab of salted butter on a warm slice and I'm sold, tough and chewy or not.

Sometime during the festive week we finally went on a picnic. I say finally because we had actually been intending to go on one approximately 9 months ago and had been constantly postponing it because, well, the weather here just makes staying indoors a much better option. But the temperature cooled considerably with the December rain so we filled up the lovely picnic basket he bought 9 months ago, and went in search of a nice patch of grass to set up camp.

I don't know about you, but at every picnic I've been to, we usually end up with a huge amount of leftover food. Thankfully, this time round our calculations weren't too far off and we only ended up leaving with an unopened bag of chips and a small tub of spicy red pepper dip. We bought the dip from the supermarket and it tasted pretty good so I was quite reluctant to see that go to waste. The elf mentioned that it would taste superb on bread and I thought, "why not put it in bread?"

The thing about using pastes which you don't make yourself is that you have no idea what went in it. I got a bit nervous when my dough turn a lurid orange hue and even more so when it did not seem capable of rising. I was fervently hoping it was due to the lower ambient temperature brought about by the torrential downpour that started just as I was about to proof the dough, and not some secret antifungal in the dip that killed my yeast. Come to think of it, the same thing happened the last time I made my olive herb loaf. I assume it must be the rain because that's the only common variable? So after the skies cleared I quickly brought my dough out to sunbathe and it eventually rose. Lesson learnt: avoid baking bread during the monsoon season.


The bread is sufficiently tasty on its own but I prefer to eat it warm--either fresh from the oven or toasted--and with a generous chunk of salted butter.


Spicy Red Pepper Bread (makes two 21cm x 11cm x 5.5cm loaves)
Ingredients
295g bread flour
40g caster sugar
4g salt
5g full cream milk powder
6g instant dried yeast
1 tsp garlic powder
1 egg beaten (and 1 more egg, for eggwash)
30g whipping cream
27g milk
92g tangzhong (instructions here)
25g melted salted butter (cooled to room temperature)
100g spicy red pepper dip (I bought mine from Cold Storage's deli section)

Directions

• Add bread flour, sugar, salt, milk powder, yeast and garlic powder into mixing bowl.
• Pour in the egg, whipping cream, milk and tangzhong.
• Knead using a dough hook attachment on speed 2.
• When ingredients start to come together, add the melted butter.
• Add in the spicy red pepper dip and continue kneading for ~20min until dough is smooth and elastic. (You can add more flour if the dough appears too wet. This varies according to the consistency of the dip you use.)
• Place a damp towel over the mixing bowl and leave to proof in a warm place until dough doubles in volume (mine took about 1h).
• Transfer dough to a clean, floured surface and punch it down.
• Divide dough into portions weighing ~70g.
• Shape it as instructed here.
• Leave to proof again.
• Preheat oven to 180˚C.
• Brush tops of risen dough with eggwash.
• Bake for ~20min or until golden brown.

I haven't really had time to do my weekly baking lately, what with Saturday duties and wedding preparations getting in the way, so Profiterole Part II is still work in progress! Thankfully I've got a few unblogged recipes to fill the gap in the meantime.

First up is a bread recipe! Have I mentioned how much I prefer baking bread to anything else? It's so much quicker and cleaner! As opposed to desserts where you have to wash your mixing bowl multiple times (depending on how many components you have), not to mention the frosting paraphernalia like nozzles and couplers which are such a pain to clean (thank goodness for interdental brushes!) And everything is just so greasy that I find myself constantly depleting the detergent supply. Bread, on the other hand, is a single component so you only have to use the mixing bowl once (or not at all if you knead by hand) and the flour soaks up all the butter/oil so it's much less greasy.

Anyway, having been so thoroughly satisfied with the Japanese Milk Bread using the tangzhong method, I decided to use it as a base for my herb bread. I was a bit worried initially because my dough didn't seem to want to rise. Had to wait much longer before expansion became evident. Perhaps it was because I did this on a cold, rainy day and my little yeast friends were feeling a bit lethargic? Whatever the case, they eventually rose to the occasion (hurhurhur) and a beautiful tasty loaf was born.

Creamy scrambled eggs piled on top of slice of this makes for a perfect weekend breakfast, in my opinion. Or you could eat it plain, which was how we phagocytosed half the loaf after it came out of the oven.

I never really knew what those soft bread buns sold in local bread shops were called. You know, the soft, fluffy, slightly sweet bread that can be found wrapped around a hotdog or topped with pork floss? I am an ardent fan of that particular kind of bread and was yearning to learn how to make it but it's quite difficult to find the recipe for something when you don't know what it's called. Thanks to the most amazing search engine that is Google, not only did I come to know of its name, I was also directed to a website that taught me how to successfully make it! (And to think all I did was type in "soft fluffy bread." Google is GREAT!)

(Apologies, the prettier rolls got eaten up before I could photograph them) 

The recipes below are adapted from Yvonne Chen's book 65°C湯種麵包 as mentioned on Christine's Recipes

Tangzhong

Ingredients

50g bread flour

250ml water

Directions

• In a saucepan, stir the flour and water together with a wooden spoon or whisk until no longer lumpy
• Cook mixture over medium-low heat, stirring continuously until it starts to thicken and streaks appear when stirring.
• Remove from heat and place clingwrap film over mixture such that the film is adherent to the surface
• Leave to cool to room temperature

Japanese Milk Bread (as in Sausage Rolls)

Ingredients

540g bread flour

86g caster sugar

8g salt

9g full cream milk powder

11g instant dry yeast

2 eggs (or 86g of egg), whisked

59g whipping cream

54g milk

184g tangzhong

49g unsalted butter, melted

1 more whisked egg for surface coating

~12 chicken franks or your preferred sausages

Directions

• Add flour, sugar, salt, milk powder and yeast into a mixing bowl
• Add in eggs, whipping cream, milk and tangzhong
• Using a dough hook attachment, mix until ingredients are just combined
• Pour in melted butter
• Continue to knead for ~30min until dough is elastic and smooth and no longer sticky
• Leave to rise under a damp towel until doubled in size (in my hot, humid country, this takes about 20min)
• Transfer dough to a clean floured surface and punch down
• Preheat oven to 180 deg Celsius
• Divide dough into portions weighing about 60g
• Roll out each portion into a thin tube (make the ends thinner than the body) and wrap around sausage
• Place on greased baking pan (ends of dough tube on the bottom), cover with clingwrap and leave to rise for another 20min
• Brush tops with eggwash and bake for 30min or until golden brown