Pizza bread and more...

When I saw Shirley's post on the "Yukone" method on bread making, I told myself I had to try this! I knew of this method, but usually, it's the water roux method where cooking of flour is required. Actually, I've wanted to attend Valerie Kong's bread workshops since last year after I saw Wendy's post. However, several times, the timing and venue wasn't quite right for me. And now, she started teaching at Shermay. I found the price too costly! I'm still waiting, and hoping, that she will go back to CC to teach breads.


Anyway, back to Shirley's recipe. I was truly tempted by this roux method. Since she mentioned that any kind of flour can be used, I decided to use my wholemeal flour. Then, while I was pouring the hot water into the wholemeal flour, I accidentally poured more than required! Oops! Fortunately, very fortunately, the buns turned out to be truly soft and fluffy! This is truly the kind of breads I like! After one day, it was still fluffy, but not as soft as I suspect I have overbaked it! However, it was still softer than those I made previously without using the water roux method! The pizza bread stayed soft even on the third day! I made these before I left for my Malaysia trip.

Here is how I made them. I made doubled the recipe.

Recipe for Pizza Bread and Pork floss Sausage Buns, extracted from Kokken69.
Makes a 9" Pizza Bread and 16 Mini Sausage Buns


Water Roux
100g Wholemeal flour
150g Boiling water (I added a total of 180g instead. It still works!)

Bread Dough
320g Bread flour
80g Plain flour
11g Instant yeast (1 pkt)
100g Fine sugar
4g Fine salt
2 nos. Whole eggs (Approx. 96g)
90g Water (I added less here because I added too much at the water roux)

Fillings
1 pkt Mini cocktail sausage
40g Mixed vegetables
1 tbsp Tomato ketchup + 1 tbsp Maggi Sweet Chilli sauce
Shredded Cheddar cheese (up to your likings)

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 dough hook, add all the ingredients except butter and water roux. Start mixing at slow speed. Then increase to medium speed and continue kneading until dough lifts from the wall of the mixing bowl. 
3. Add the water roux  and continue to knead for 3 mins at low speed.
4. Add butter and increasing kneading speed to medium.
5. Continue kneading for 15 mins on medium speed until dough is no longer sticky and does not break when pulled to perform window test. 
6. 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.
8. Divide the big dough into thirds - one third is for the pizza dough. The remaining two thirds is to equally divide into 16 pcs.
9. Roll each dough into a round ball and leave to proof for 10mins.
10. Flatten each ball and roll out to a circle with a rolling pin. Place the mini sausage into each of the small 16 doughs, wrap and seal the edges of the dough to form a ball.
11. Flatten the bigger dough and let it rest in a pizza pan.
12. Leave to proof for 1 hour.
13. Brush the sausage doughs with milk. Bake it in a pre-heated oven at 185C for 8-10mins until brown.
14. Slightly flatten the centre of the pizza dough. Spread the tomato and chilli sauce evenly on the dough. Place the mixed vegetables evenly on top of the sauces. Then add sausage slices on it. Topped up with shredded cheddar cheese.
15. Bake it at 185C for about 18mins until slightly brown.
16. Leave to cool.
17. For the sausage bread, spread some mayo on top, then rolled them on pork floss to coat.

I'm submitting this to the Apiring Bakers #8 - Bread Seduction, hosted by The Sweetylicious.

More Pound, more variety!

Despite attending my Barista Training Workshop for two evenings this week , I still find some time to do some baking. One of the cake, had to be pound cake again! Not that I purposely wanted to bake pound cake, but it was actually a request from a colleague to have pound cake. Actually she requested for blueberry pound cake, but I baked an orange coconut cream cheese pound cake for her instead. My excuse was - I don't have blueberries at home. :p Partly also because I still have cream cheese and I want to use them up. I discover that by adding desiccated coconut to the orange pound cake, it makes a whole lot of differences! It's a new "concotion" I discovered, and I'm rather happy with the combi. Anyone of you can try it too! :p



I also made some chocolate banana jam because my children told me that they like the bread with jam in school. So I thought I'll made them some jam. However, after I made the jam, they didn't want to take it. *sigh* children!


Today, I decided to bake some breads, and swiss rolls was decided some last minute. Nowadays, I like to prepare bread dough the night before, and do the rest the following morning. Usually, it'll be Friday prepare dough and Saturday to mould and bake. Then I'll leave the dough in the fridge to proof. I also added pre-ferment dough to the fresh dough to make it softer. Today, I made plain buns (for my egg mayo), pork floss buns (of different shapes) and white lotus buns with black sesame seeds. It's really not easy baking food for a family of 6. If they like the food, it'll be gone in a day or two. However, if they don't like, the food can be kept for a week and nobody eats! I had to bake about 16 buns on weekend to see us through Sunday breakfast. That means 400g of flour (bread + plain). See what I meant by feeding a family of 6, almost like a small football team!


I was testing out the swiss roll cake sheet for a cake order next week. Not wanting to waste the cake, I used the chocolate banana jam as my filling and added whipped cream to it. It tasted rather good, even though the whipping cream was rather thick. I've not baked swiss rolls for a long long time!

Finding Time

Time is always ticking away. It's difficult sometimes to decide what you want to do when time is not on your side. Lately, I was quite busy with work, followed by course assignments (from work), baking and surfing for recipes. Also, school exams are drawing nearer. I still have to spend time coaching my eldest son once a while, even though I've out-sourced his learning out. That was also my excuse for not updating my blogs as often now.

I found that no matter how busy I am, I will set aside sometime to do some baking. It's a "mandatory" activity I just have to do. I think I derived satisfaction when my bakes turn out to be good. If it didn't, I'll be disappointed. Then I try to analyse what went wrong. I try to make it a point to take notes on the bakes, what was reduced, what was added, what was the temperature etc. So that the next time when I use the same recipe again, I'll just follow exactly.

This week was no different. Some bakes, some good, some are not. Here are the consolidated list for this week.

Baked Japanese Sweet Potatoes.


Orange Cream Cheese Pound Cake.


Chiffon Sponge.


Chicken Curry Buns.


Pork Floss Buns.

Breads, Tarts, Cakes.

It seems that I have been a bit outdated in updating my blog. So many stuff to update, but just so little time. Sometimes, it's just a compromise between updating blog or baking. Finally found sometime to update on what I have baked for the past few days. The bakes are not in chronological order!

Pork Floss Buns.



Banana Chiffon Cake. After a successful attempt on Kevin's recipe, I tried it again, but this time, I reduced by two egg yolks and the chiffon is really soft & nice!



Cranberry Bread Loaves. I modified this from Alex Goh's recipe. However, it wasn't very soft. Therefore, I shall not post any recipe here.



Chocolate Oreo Tarts. I layered this tart with chocolate, then crushed oreo, then chocolate again & finally crushed oreo.


Pineapple Tarts. I baked these tarts with the ready-made dough & pineapple fillings from Gina's Pineapple Tart workshop the day before. The pineapple fillings is very fragrant & moist. The crust is however, a bit crispy. I would have much prefer the melt-in-the-mouth kind. But generally, the taste is great. I could just pop a few at one go! The recipe can be found at KC forum.

All These In A Day's Work!

All these are in a day's (Saturday's) work! I'm just too tired to elaborate. :p I shall elaborate more in a couple of days! Sorry folks!

In the morning: White Lotus & Sausage & Floss Buns



Lunch time: My version of Mee Goreng


After lunch: Orange Lapis Cake



Dinner time: Rosemary & Mixed Herbs Roasted Chicken with Chicken Rice & Kailan

I'm into breads!

I've always like breads. Didn't think I want to bake breads since I like them so much. But lately, I've been baking breads. Though I'm not creative to create a bread on my own, at least I tried to bake the basic breads well first. :) Today's breads are sausages with pork floss & red bean sesame breads.

Brush them with egg before baking, so that it will give a nice shiny brown.

Topped the red bean breads with sesame seeds.

These are the baked sausages breads.

I spread them with sweetened condensed milk, then topped them with crispy pork floss.

My batch of breads today. :) Don't have to buy bread for tomorrow already!

It's all breads weekend!

Suddenly had the urge to perfect my breads. Maybe because I still have some cakes in the fridge, so I didn't bake any cakes this weekend. I remembered seeing some breads baked in round cake pan, so I tried doing that today.

Brushed them up with egg.

Very brown and shiny after baking. Turns brown very fast in this kind of pan.

Spread them with sweetened condensed milk, and topped up with generous pork floss! Yummy!

The batch of breads I baked today.