Back to Buns

After a few rounds of loaf, I'm back to buns again. You'll probably be seeing more of buns these few days as I've just borrowed a Bun Lovers from the library yesterday. Flipped through the book and have already bookmarked a few which I'm interested to try. The first being this.

Nugget Salad Bun


I was immediately captivated by the picture in the book when I first saw it this morning. I just had to set my hands on it. Afterall, I had all the ingredients, so no excuse, right? :)

It was a pretty easy recipe. The dough, however, was wet. I had reduced the liquid in the recipe and it was a little better. You see, I did 2 batches of the dough and combined them together. That was how I know. It took me about an hour to knead the dough before I was willing to say ok.

On a side note, I'm feeling more and more uncertain as I do more hand kneading. I never seem to be kneading the dough correctly though I've followed the various videos. Some say we are not supposed to tear the dough during kneading. But I find my dough always tearing during the kneading (when I fold back). In fact, while doing the membrane test, it'll also tear up most of the time. It's never that elastic like a rubber, like what I've seen in some books.



Luckily, the breads turned out real good and soft. Good snacks for kids as they were small little buns, not the usual big ones we had. Definitely a keeper.

Nugget Salad Bun

Ingredients
Bread flour 350g
Cake flour 50g
Instant Yeast 8g (original recipe uses 11g)
Salt 1/8 tsp
Sugar 30g
Milk Powder 50g
White Sesame Seeds 1/2 tbsp
Milk 290g (original recipe calls for 300ml of full cream milk, but I used 290g of HL milk)
Butter 50g

Fillings
28 pieces chicken nuggets, fried (I used breaded fish burger patty and cut each into 4 pieces after frying as the nuggets shown in the book is breaded)

Toppings
Mayonnaise 3tbsp
Lettuce 100g (shredded)

Method
1. Combine all dry ingredients and mix well. Add in milk to form a smooth dough. (If using mixer, mix at medium speed.)
2. Add in butter. Knead dough till smooth and elastic. Cover and rest dough for 30 mins.
3. Divide dough into 30g per portion. Roll into rounds and rest for 10 mins.
4. Flatten each dough, wrap in fried nugget. Seal all edges and roll into square shapes.



5. Cut the dough into halves and put them together into mould.
Tip: Try not to cut through, leave the bottom layer of dough intact and fold along the uncut dough. If you do cut through, you can place the halves on top of each other and give them a light press. To ensure your dough stands straight and does not fall apart, it is good to place them in small cups (2 inch diameter) for second proofing.




6. Leave to rise until double in size. Baked in preheated oven at 200°C for 15-20 mins until cooked.
7. When cool, drizzle with mayonnaise and garnish with lettuce shreds before serving.
Note: If you intend to store the bread for later consumption, do not fill the toppings beforehand.

I did not use all the dough just to make the buns. I used some of it to make some Chocolate Swirl Buns.



After wrapping the dough around the chocolate sheet, I did a 3 folds, roll out and another 3 folds and roll out. Then roll the dough swiss roll style starting from the long end. Finally cut it into small portions and place them into paper cups for second proofing. I thought they look a little like roses, don't you think so?




Finally, this is the red bean ice-cream that I've made using my VM. It's not too sweet, just nice for the kids. Next time, I'll add some red bean chunks to give it more texture.



This recipe was created for the VM. If you're interested to give it a try, make sure you use an equally strong blender.

Red Bean Ice-cream

Ingredients
Red beans 200g (cooked)
Sugar 100g
Water 300g
Cream Cheese 100g
Condensed Milk 35g (optional)
Plain Yogurt 20g

Method
1. Blend the cooked red beans, sugar and water together in high speed for 1 min. Freeze the mixture overnight into ice cubes.
2. Blend the red bean ice cubes together with other ingredients using variable speed 1 to 10, then high speed for 30 secs until creamy.
3. Freeze the mixture for a minimum of 2 hours.
Note: I find that 2 hours is barely enough to freeze it. Usually I will let it freeze overnight. Using a steeper container will need a longer time for the ice-cream to freeze.


Mood: happy