Bread-Making: Sweet Potato & Sausage Buns

Recently, I bought a bread-making book “一种面团做60种排队面包" by a Taiwanese lady 陈明里. 

The dough making process is quite straight forward and it yields just the right quantity of buns that I needed.  For the previous batch of milk custard buns which I baked 2 weeks ago (picture below), the buns were soft and tasty and do not get hardened when we ate them the next day.

Today is my 2^nd attempt in baking  buns using the same basic dough recipe which yielded me 10 buns with 2 different kinds of fillings: chicken sausage and sweet potato.

  

 Here is the translated recipe for the basic bread dough:

Basic Dough ingredients:

• 323g bread flour
• 58g caster sugar (I used 40g of fruit sugar instead)
• 6g milk powder
• 5g salt
• 6g instant yeast
• 168g water
• 26g egg (I used 1 whole small egg instead, as it is difficult to divide out the egg to the required weight accurately)
• 32g unsalted butter

1. Mix the dry ingredients(1^st 5 listed above)  together in a mixing bowl
2. Add in water and egg
3. Mix at low speed (I used my hand-held mixer with the dough hood fixed on) until all dry ingredients are well blended with the liquid ingredient
4. Turn to medium speed and continue to mix until the dough no long stick on to the bowl and is smooth and not sticky
5. Add in butter and continue to mix on medium until the dough is smooth and shinning (To test readiness, stretch the dough into thin layer. It should not break/tear)
6. Add a little olive oil into the bowl to grease the dough so that it can be taken out without sticking to the hand (I simply rub both hands with olive oil)
7. Smoothed the surface of the dough by “tuck-in” the uneven parts to form a dome-like smooth dough
8. Place the dough back into the mixing bowl
9. Let rise for about 90 minutes until the size doubled (I left it in the oven (power off) and cover it with  plastic bag though out  the rising process)
10. Once doubled, take out the dough, press down and repeat step 7 to form a smooth dome and return it to the bowl to rise further till it double again, about 30 minutes
11. Take out the dough, flatten and roll it into long stripe. Cut the dough into 10 small dough, each weigh about 60g
12. Lightly knead each dough to form small individual ball Leave them on lined baking tray to rest for 10-15 min
13. Ready for use

To make sweet potato fillings, I cut sweet potato into small pieces and steam them until soft. Add in some butter, mash them thoroughly and leave the mashed potato in the fridge until ready for use.

To make Sausage Buns: Roll the bun dough into long stripe, place one sausage at one end of the stripe and roll the dough over the sausage

To make Sweet Potato Buns: Roll about one tablespoon of  mashed sweet potato into small individual ball, flatten the bun dough and place the sweet potato ball in the centre of the flatten dough, wrap it up with the dough to form a ball. To get the petal shape, slightly flatten the dough (with filling inside) and use kitchen scissors to make 6 cuts around the flattened dough.

Leave the buns on the lined tray and let rest until the buns doubled in size (I waited about 30 minutes)

Bake in pre-heated over at 200 degree C for 10 minutes (I baked mine at 180 degree C). Brush the top of each bun with melted butter while they are still hot. This is to give the buns a shinny look.