Pumpkin Anpans & Spicy Tuna Buns

I love making bread.  I own a bread machine but rarely use it to bake bread with it.  BM does the inital messy mixing work and then I take over from the kneading part onwards.  Let's just say that dough kneading is really
therapeutic :)

I normally make about 8 to 10 buns for my hubby and I to eat for breakfast over 2 days.  This time, pumpkin anpan and spicy tuna buns were on my to-bake list.

The sweet buns were made using Alex Goh's gelatinized sweet bun recipe from the Magic Bread book.  I halved the whole recipe and yield about 480g dough.

Gelatinized dough
100g bread flour
70ml 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 1000g to 1100g dough)

300g bread flour
100g plain flour
80g sugar
20g milk powder
1 tbsp instant yeast
½ tsp salt
175ml cold water
1 cold egg (about 60g)
60g cold butter, cubed (Since I halved the recipe, the balance egg were kept for egg wash for the buns)

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 and divide into 60g ball, leave aside for 5 min for easier shaping. (I divided it into 40g this time to get small and cuter buns!)
8. Roll out each ball and fill with desired fillings.  Seal up and place sealed sides facing down on greased baking tray and let proof for 45 min or till double in size.
9. Brush top of buns with egg wash and decorate as desired.
10. Bake in preheated oven at 180 deg for 15-20 min.  Remove to cool on rack.

Pumpkin Anpan fillings
200g pumpkin (centre removed and deseeded)
60g caster sugar
15g softened butter (room temperature)

*Egg wash and pumpkin seeds for decorations

1.  Remove the skin and centre of pumpkin, cut into small cubes and put it
to steam on medium high heat for about 10 minutes (or till soft).
2.  Mash pumpkin while it is still hot.
3.  Add in sugar and butter and mix it well.
4.  If filling is too soft and wet, put over low heat and stir constantly.
5.  Leave aside to cool before use.

Spicy tuna fillings
1 can of spicy tuna (or any flavour of your choice) - remove chilli and
spoon off excess oil
1 medium onion (chopped till small pieces)

You may fry tuna flakes and onion over small fire till slightly dry OR just mix chopped onions with tuna flakes and use as it is.