Japanese Melon Pan

Am disappointed at myself.
Since looking at this recipe a few months back, I've been wanting to try this so bad.
But the result was, my melon pan was disastrous. Even though I followed the recipe through and through, inarguably I made a few major mistakes during the breadmaking process, resulting in a failed bunch of melon pans.

They were tasty though, but they didn't rise as I had expected (my mistakes) thus making their appearances not very pleasant. Next time I'll try baking them again, and I won't repeat my mistakes ever again!

My melon pan. They look like this defeated, fat cookies instead of buns :p

I tried Happy Home Baking's recipe for this bunch.


Japanese Melon Pan
from Happy Home Baking

makes 12 doughs

Ingredients:
Bread Dough:
300g bread flour
6g instant yeast
36g caster sugar
5g salt
6g skim milk powder 
200g warm water (37~38 degC) 
30g unsalted butter (bring to room temperature)

Pastry layer
80g unsalted butter (bring to room temperature)
90g caster sugar
80g egg, lightly beaten 
200g cake flour
2g baking powder
some melon extract (I left this out as I don't have this)

some caster sugar for dusting/coating

1. Sift bread flour, caster sugar, salt, milk powder into a mixing bowl. Add in instant yeast and mix the powdered mixture a little.
2. Add in warm water. DO NOT add in all the water at one go, leave a little bit so as to adjust the texture of the dough.
3. Mix the ingredients with hand and slowly form into a dough. Add the remaining water if it is too dry.
4. Transfer dough to work surface. Knead until the dough longer sticks to the work surface. This should take about less than 5 mins.
5. Flatten the dough and add in the butter. Continue to knead. Initially, the dough will be very oily, after a few kneads, the butter will be absorbed by the dough. Continue to knead until the dough no longer feel sticky to your hand and will not stick to the work surface. This should take about 15 to 20 mins.
6. Place dough in a lightly greased (with butter) bowl, cover with cling wrap and let proof for about one hour, or until double in bulk.
7. While the dough is proofing, prepare the pastry layer. With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until mixture turns pale.
8. Add in a few drops of melon extract if desired.
9. Add in lightly beaten eggs in 3 addition. Beat well after each addition.
10. Sift over cake flour and baking powder. Mix with a spatula until flour mixture is fully incorporate. Divide into 12 portions, about 35~40g each. For the chocolate chips version, wrapped some chocolate chips into each pastry dough. Place in a tray and let the dough chill in the fridge for at least 30 mins.
11. Punch out the gas in the bread dough and divide into 12 portion, about 45g each. Roll into rounds. Cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and let the dough relax for 10mins.
12. Remove chilled pastry dough from the fridge. Roll out each dough in between 2 layers of cling wraps (I used clear plastic bags). Roll the bread dough again into rounds again. Remove the top layer of the cling wrap and place the bread dough onto the pastry dough. With the bottom layer of the cling wrap still intact, wrap the pastry dough around the bread dough. Carefully remove the bottom layer of the cling wrap, at the same time, smoothing the edges of the pastry dough. NOTE: DO NOT cover the Entire bread dough with the pastry dough. Leave the bottom 2 ~ 3 cm uncovered. The dough needs the space to expand, otherwise the pastry dough will burst and the resulting appearance will not be very pleasing.
13. Coat the exterior with caster sugar, stamp patterns on the surface with cookie cutters or decorate as desired. Leave doughs to proof for the second time for about 40 ~ 50mins.
14. Bake in pre-heated oven at 170 deg C (I set mine as 180 deg C) for 10 ~ 12 mins. Note: mine took 20mins to brown!

A Little Recipe For You

I'm going off for a 10 day family vacation to the Kangaroo-land down under!
I shall come back with tons... tons of cookbooks! (hopefully!)

Anyhow... I made buns last week, but I totally forgot to snap good looking pictures as by the time they were ready, it was already late at night!

Those buns were very delightful because, taste-wise, it was the best buns I've made so far. Shape-wise, I need more practice of course....

The recipe had me produce four loaves of sweet bread.
I varied the filling between cheese, rice chocolate, and chocolate-cheese.

During the process of bread proofing, I was a bit anxious about the result. I've waited for quite a while and the dough didn't proof as much as when I made bread with other recipes. But they became so huge during baking, thus being the perfect size for loaf bread.


Roti Sobek (Tear-Off Buns?)
from Primarasa Femina

Ingredients:
750 g bread flour
250 g all purpose flour
15 g instant yeast
250 g granulated sugar
100 g powdered milk
15 g salt
200 g unsalted butter
5 egg yolks
500 ml water

1. Mix bread flour, all purpose flour, yeast, sugar, milk, and salt. Mix in butter and keep mixing with hands until they become small crusts.

2. Insert egg yolks. Add in water little by little while kneading, until the dough become mixed properly and not sticking in your hands.

3. Turn dough into a big ball, cover with plastic and humid cloth until it becomes twice its original size, for around 60 minutes.
Gently punch the dough down and divide them into small balls (50 gr each) and leave it again for second proofing, around 20-30 minutes.

4. Grease loaf pans with butter and flour. Press the doughs and roll them one by one. Place them next to each other in the loaf pans.
For me, because I put fillings in my doughs, After I pressed the dough I added in my desired fillings before rolling and placing them in the loaf pans.
Sit the doughs once more for 60 mins.

5. Preheat oven to 350ºF / 180ºC and bake for around 45 minutes.

Buns

Decided to be adventurous and experimented with the cinnamon rolls recipe I made last week.

Instead if making them into cinnamon rolls, I made buns for my parents.
My parents love buns for breakfast. My mom loves cheese buns and my dad loves chocolate buns.

I used the same recipe as this cinnamon roll recipe I used from Smitten Kitchen, but instead of shaping them into cinnamon rolls, I just stuffed them with cheese or chocolate and formed them into tiny buns.

The result was actually great.
My mom loves thick textured bread, so she loved these buns a lot.
Fresh out of the oven the crust was tad crispy, but when she steamed them the morning after for breakfast, they turned fluffy.

So happy that I could bake bread that they like. Actually am now very curious about baking the perfect batch of bread, so I'm gonna try other recipes soon.

Cinnamon Bread

I love how fresh baked bread smells. And how butter smells so yummy. And also how cinnamon smells are mega irresistible.

So I decided to be adventurous and just baked my own set of cinnamon rolls after looking at Jenny's rolls, which recipe was from Smitten Kitchen. It didn't turn out to appear as cinnamon rolls, so to call it cinnamon bread suits more. Or cinnamon roll bread? -_-

It was very fun making this bread. It was my first time ever baking my own bread. I had never kneaded any dough before and all. Thank God it turned out to be pretty decent.

I sprinkled the leftover filling mixture on top of the dough that's why it's very brownish (like burnt brownish). It's not burnt or anything. I'm not a big fan of overly sweet stuffs, and the reason why sometimes I prefer Saint Cinnamon buns to Cinnabon's is because Saint Cinnamon's buns don't actually have extra glaze. So instead of the milky and sweet glaze, I sprinkled the leftover filling... which was so GOOD.

The warm and milky bread that smells so good... oh YUMS. My whole house smelled like cinnamon yesterday and I could not be happier by that. I always dig Saint Cinnamon and Cinnabon buns... no matter how overpriced they are, just because I love the smell of cinnamon and the warmth feeling those buns present to my tummy.

I did make several crucial mistakes during the process.

First of all, the baking pan. I didn't have pans that are bigger than the one I used. Instead of having slight distance to each other, the dough had to cram in a small pan. My baked bread looks like a deformed Quasimodo thanks to that. Mistake noted... won't do that again. Will buy bigger baking pan.

I'm also embarrassed by the fact that I fell asleep!

YES! I fell asleep while waiting for the dough to rise!! :(

For the second dough rising time -- which was after I arranged the dough in the pan for it to double its size -- I fell asleep, so instead of 45 minutes according to recipe, my dough was left for merely 3 hours! When I woke up I felt so angry at myself. THANK GOD again the bread turned out decent or else I might be suicidal. Kidding.

Anyway after day one my bread hardened... anyone knows why?

Cinnamon Rolls-Bread

recipe from Smitten Kitchen

Dough

1 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 1/2 cups (or more) unbleached all purpose flour, divided
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 1/4 teaspoons rapid-rise or instant yeast (from 1 envelope yeast)
1 teaspoon salt
Nonstick vegetable oil spray (I didn't have this so I used olive oil)

Filling
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Pinch of salt

For dough:

Combine milk and butter in glass measuring cup. Microwave on high until butter melts and mixture is just warmed to 120°F to 130°F, about 30 to 45 seconds. Pour into bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Add 1 cup flour, sugar, egg, yeast, and salt. Beat on low speed 3 minutes, stopping occasionally to scrape down sides of bowl. Add additional 2 1/2 cups flour. Beat on low until flour is absorbed and dough is sticky, scraping down sides of bowl. If dough is very sticky, add more flour by tablespoonfuls until dough begins to form ball and pulls away from sides of bowl. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface. Knead until smooth and elastic, adding more flour if sticky, about 8 minutes. (You may also use a KitchenAid’s dough hook for this process.) Form into ball.

Lightly oil large bowl with nonstick spray. Transfer dough to bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, then kitchen towel. Let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 2 hours.

For filling:

Mix brown sugar, cinnamon and pinch of salt in medium bowl.

Press down dough. Transfer to floured work surface. Roll out to 15×11-inch rectangle. Spread butter over dough, leaving 1/2-inch border. Sprinkle cinnamon mixture evenly over butter. Starting at the longer side, roll dough into log, pinching gently to keep it rolled up. With seam side down, trim ends straight if they are uneven (we baked them in a ramekin, incapable of discarding such deliciousness) cut remaining dough crosswise with thin sharp knife (a good serrated worked well here) into 18 equal slices (each about 1/2 to 3/4 inch wide).

Spray two 9-inch square glass baking dishes (an 8-inch square metal pan worked just fine, too) with nonstick spray. Divide rolls between baking dishes, arranging cut side up (there will be almost no space between rolls). Cover baking dishes with plastic wrap, then kitchen towel. Let dough rise in warm draft-free area until almost doubled in volume, 40 to 45 minutes, though yours, like mine, may take longer. Don’t skimp on the double-rising time.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375°F. Bake rolls until tops are golden, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and invert immediately onto rack. Cool 10 minutes. Turn rolls right side up.

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You can also put glaze on top of your rolls (Cinnabon does this). It's totally optional.

This is the Smitten Kitchen version of the glaze.

4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine cream cheese, sugar, butter, and vanilla. Using electric mixer beat until smooth. Spread glaze on rolls.