Luncheon Meat Buns 午餐肉餐包

Very much into bun makings lately. Dunno why but I just enjoy the kneading part. It is really therapeutic. I get all excited seeing the dough puff up when put to bake in the oven. I am happy when hubby tells me that the bread are soft and yummy after each bun breakfast. Hahaha. Satisfaction. You can say that.

I cannot help falling back to Alex Goh's gelatinized basic sweet bread recipe for my bun makings. It is a foolproof recipe and let me have bread and buns that stays soft for 2 days (I think it can last 3 days but I cannot testify for that as I usually bake just enough to last 2 days).

Bun making is so so versatile. Just keep with your favourite sweet bread recipe, portion the dough equally and stuff different fillings to make savoury or sweet buns.

Hubby has given me some suggestions for fillings in buns. Expect more bun posts soon! ;P

Luncheon Meat Buns

Gelatinized Basic Sweet Bread recipe by Alex Goh

Gelatinized dough
50g bread flour
35ml boiling water

1. Place flour in a mixing bowl.
2. Add hot boiling water and mix with wooden spoon to form a rough dough.
3. Cover bowl with cling film and leave dough to cool in the fridge for at least 1 hour, and up to 48 hours.


Basic sweet bread dough
(Yield roughly 480g dough. I divided them into 6 equal portions. You can make 8 buns with each dough at 60g too.)

150g bread flour
50g plain flour
40g sugar
10g milk powder
1/2 tbsp instant yeast
1/4 tsp salt
87ml cold water
1/2 cold egg (about 30g)
30g cold butter, cubed 

Filling
6 or 8 slices of luncheon meat, sliced about 1cm thick

Garnishing (Optional)
Sesame seeds
Seaweed

1. Combine flour, sugar, milk powder, yeast and salt together in a mixing bowl.
2. Tear the gelatinized dough into pieces and add to the bowl along with the eggs
3. Using a stand electric mixer, mix on low speed, adding cold water gradually.
4. Mix until dough is well combined and leave the side of bowl.
5. Add in the cold butter cubes and mix on medium speed until dough is smooth.
6. Shape dough into a ball, leave to proof for 40 min or until doubled.
7. Punch down dough to rid excess air, divide dough into 6 or 8 portions at 80g or 60g reaspectively and roll it round and set aside for 5 min to let it relax for easier rolling.
8. Roll out dough into a long oblong shape.
9. Place a slice of luncheon meat on centre of dough, cover luncheon meat with one end of dough and wrap up with another side of dough.
10. Seal dough to secure luncheon meat from spilling out. Set dough with sealed ends at bottom.
11. Place dough onto greased baking tin.
13. Cover with clean moist cloth and leave to proof for 40min.
14. Brush top with the leftover beaten egg (mixed with 1 tsp water) from the dough mix. (Sprinkled some sesame seeds or place a pc of seaweed on top of each dough as garnish)

15. Bake in preheated oven at 180deg for 25min or till bun top turn slightly golden brown. (Every oven works differently so indicated temperature might or might not work for you.)