Baking #134: Black Sesame Red Bean Buns

As mentioned in my previous blog entry, I turned down the dinner invitation from the gang and came home to bake these Black Sesame Red Bean Buns. Not that I intentionally declined their invitation but I had been trying to eat clean since yesterday. I do not want to jeopardize my clean eating regime. Good food can wait anyways.

Black Sesame Red Bean Buns (adapted from LY’s Kitchen Ventures)

Ingredients:

• 200g full cream milk
• 35g unsalted butter
• 24g sugar *raw sugar*
• 1 tsp salt
• 300g bread flour
• 35g black sesame powder
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• red bean paste

Directions:

1. Put in ingredients into the bread machine. Start off with liquid ingredients – milk and butter, followed by the dry ingredients – sugar, salt, bread flour, black sesame powder and instant yeast.
2. Start the machine with DOUGH setting and let the machine works it’s wonder.
3. When the dough is ready, punch down to release trapped air inside the dough and allow the dough to rest for another five minutes.
4. Divide dough into 10 equal pieces and wrap them with red bean paste filling.
5. Place wrapped dough in a greased baking tin, let them proof for an hour or until big in size and puffy looking.
6. Bake in preheated oven of 200 degree Celsius for 15 minutes or until they turned golden brown.
7. When the buns are done, remove from the oven immediately to cool on a cooling rack.
8. Brush some butter or margarine on the buns for glossy effect.

The buns are still cooling on the cooling rack as I am typing this blog entry. But would you look at the streaks when the buns were being pulled apart? The buns were soft and fluffy when they were freshly out from the oven. Sad to say, they turned rather dense the next day when cooled down. I am not sure what had gone wrong with these buns.

Perhaps I had deflated the dough too much while shaping? However, my colleague claimed that it was because I had used room temperature milk instead of cold milk for the dough. I am not sure if it really makes any difference but I shall try with cold milk next time. And she suggested that I use shortening instead of butter.

Hmm … What do you think?