Soft Buns

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!!
Hope you all had plenty of fun lighting lanterns and eating mooncakes :D

I was originally going to write about some snowskin mooncakes I made a two days ago........

Unfortunately, they all got gobbled up before I had the chance to take photos. (they were that good) Don't worry- I'll be making them again very soon!!


Instead, I'll tell you about something not as sweet, but equally as good!

It's been a while since I've baked bread, so when I saw these extremely soft buns on Shirley's blog, I couldn't wait to make them. I'd been wondering why the buns I bought from Asian bakeries were always soft wrinkly whilst the ones which came out of my oven, though soft, always remained unwrinkly- call me strange, but I think wrinkly buns are beautiful! Better still, the recipe was was simple, consisting only of a quick roux to be made the night before- perfect for someone in a lazy mood :)

I wanted to keep my buns simple, so I just twisted them into a knot, as I'd seen in one of my cookbooks (though mine didn't turn out quite as pretty). The buns turned out very soft, as I'd expected and were especially good straight out of the oven.

I think I'm starting to get hooked on bread baking again!!

Soft Buns
Recipe from Køkken69

Water Roux
50g Bread Flour
75g Boiling water

Bread Dough
6gm Active Dry East
160gm Bread Flour
40gm Plain Flour
50gm Sugar
2gm Salt
50gm Water
1 Egg
40gm Butter

Method
1. Mix water roux ingredients together in a bowl. Cover bowl with cling wrap and store in fridge for 12 hours.
2. In a mixer fitted with a bread hook, add flour, yeast, sugar, egg and water. Start mixing at slow speed for 2 mins. Add salt and continue to knead until dough lifts from the wall of the mixing bowl.
3. Add (1) and continue to knead for 3 mins.
4. Add butter and increasing kneading speed to speed 4.
5. Continue kneading for 15 mins on speed 4 until dough is no longer sticky and does not break when pulled to perform window test.
6. Place dough in a slightly oiled bowl. Cover with cling wrap and leave to proof in a warm area for 45mins.
7. With lightly floured hands and table top, knead (6) to form a smooth round ball. Divide dough into 12 balls - about 40g each.
8. Roll each small ball into a round ball and leave to proof for 10mins. Shape into a knot (or whatever you want to shape it into!) then leave to proof for 1 hour.
9. Brush with egg white and decorate.
10. Bake at 185C for 8-10mins until brown. Leave to cool.

* I made mine in my bread machine, but I'll point out that if you do, you should put the roux before the dough forms- bread machines do a terrible job of incorporating wet things into dry doughs. It took mine almost the whole of the kneading cycle to knead the roux in!