KookyCulinary

This summer has been a crazy summer. Between travels and visitors, we hardly ate at home. Even if we were at home, we were using the grill. My poor kitchen especially all the baking gadgets have been gathering cobwebs. But now, summer is officially over for us since the litte one will start preschool next week. We have been just trying to have a calm week and settle down before all the school-related activities begin. I also figured it is time to dust off the cobwebs and start baking again. What better way to start off than a batch of fresh baked buns?

A friend asked me how to shape the buns to be like those dinner rolls that you can peel apart and eat. So I will attempt to show how I do it. I start off by making my usual basic sweet bread dough in my breadmaker. After the 1st rise, I remove the dough from the breadmaker, divide into 9 equal portions and place in a square pan like below.

Leave it to proof for about 1 hour. This is how it look like. I would proof it just a little longer if I have more time.

Then heat oven to 375F and bake for 10-15 mins. Remove and brush the top with a little melted butter.

  

My first bread of the year! I have been neglecting my breadmaker for a while, so I decided to dust it off and started baking breads again. This is just a simple braided cranberry bread using the sweet bun recipe. The recipe can be found here. I will need to practise my braiding skill a little more since the braids are not very prominent.

Not too long ago, there was a Hokkaido Milk Loaf rage among the Asian food blogs. Hokkaido Milk Loaf is supposed to be really fluffy even without the addition of bread improver which is vital ingredient in baking soft Asian bread. I’ve been meaning to try it for a long time but as usual, never got around to it. Then when I finally got around to it, I realised I didn’t have whipping cream . *sigh* I really need to be more organized!!! :p

Anyway, I guess I could have gone out to the store to get some whipped cream but anyone with a toddler knows that it’s not an easy task to just go to the store. : ( It’s just much easier to bake something else!! Then I remembered I saw another milk loaf recipe while I was blog-hopping and when I checked that recipe, I was so glad to see that no whipping cream is needed in this recipe.

Instead of making one big loaf, I made 3 little ones in my mini loaf pan. Here’s how it looked when I took it out of the oven. It turned out really good. Soft and fluffy!!

Since I had a big bag of cranberries at home, I added them to one of the loaf before baking. That turned out really well. It tasted like raisin bread. Toddler even add it plain without her favorite peanut butter!

I’ve been bitten by the lazy bug lately. The heat must be getting to me or just plain laziness :p
Anyway, managed to get my act together and baked some bread for the family.

Did some hot dog bun for the little one and a couple of garlic butter buns for the hubby. These buns are the soft type like the ones we get at the bakery in Malaysia & Singapore. I love these soft buns. I remember when I was in high school, I had to pass by a bakery on the way to school. I would always stop & buy one to eat. I finally learned how to bake these from my mom when she came here towards the end of my pregnancy. I was eating it everyday at that time. No wonder my baby loves bread!!

Ingredients:
250 gm bread flour
50 gm castor sugar
1 ½ tsp instant yeast
1 egg yolk
40 gm butter
65 gm water
65 gm milk
½ tsp salt

Method:

1. Put ingredients into bread machine according to the specification of your breadmaker
2. Start the DOUGH ONLY cycle. Aprox 30 min knead, 30 min rise
3. Divide into 50 gm each, round & roll into ropes. Twill around sausage or any other filling as desired.
4. Proof till double in bulk (30 – 45 min). Egg wash & bake at 375 F for 8 – 10 min

For the longest time, I thought Por Lor Bao is pineapple-filled bun. Then I found out that there is NO PINEAPPLE in this bun at all!!! : o It’s actually just a plain soft bun with a crispy top that looks like a pineapple skin (see explanation here)

Since toddler loves to eat Por Lor Bao, I decided to try to make it using the sweet bread recipe from Baking Mum’s blog & the crust recipe from Jo’s Deli.

The end result: Doesn’t look very pretty but tastewise, it’s very good. I guess I didn’t put enough crust on the bread ‘cos after proofing the bread, the crust kinda fell apart. But I will definitely make this again.

Cinnamon topped soft pretzel

As my toddler would say, YummyDelicious!!!!
Recipe from cwl at Kitchen Capers

Chili Tuna Bun