Sausage and Cheese buns

 The girl loves buns with sausage and cheese toppings.  Of course this will be one of my attempts.

Made these on Monday.  I remembered to add a little more salt and a little more fat to the original recipe.  To be precise, 1/4 tsp more of salt and 5 gram more of butter.  

The salt didn't do anything to the yeast.  It worked pretty well.  The butter did make the bread softer, despite a mere 5 gram more.  Quite amazing really, what a mere 5 gram can do to the texture of the bread.  Imagine what it can do the body.  But well, as long as it makes the end product softer and tastier, no need to fret too much.  Just pound the ground harder when I go for my routine jog in the morning.

Round 2 proofing, tray 1

  

Round 2 proofing, tray 2

 Come to think of it, I did take a bit longer to reach the window-pane stage while kneading this batch of dough.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the additional butter.  Or perhaps I was more gentle with the dough this time round.  

Oven ready

After 1 hour of the second proofing, this tray is ready for the oven.  Dot the swirly buns with sausage and brush the surface evenly with whole egg wash and into the oven.

Cozy in the oven at 170 deg C.  No cheese topping yet.  I found that if I add the cheese at the beginning of the bake, it will brown too much and dry up.  Perhaps I ought to get those cheese with higher melting point, or those more suitable for baking.  But I have no idea what are those.  And that means a little bit of research is necessary.  Okay, this will be a test for next time. 

For now, it will be processed cheddar cheese which I cut into strips and carelessly strewn over the buns.

Cheddar cheese added

Half way through the bake time, I added the cheese.  And it melted almost immediately.  That got me worried about the cheese browning up too soon again.  But luckily it didn't.

Here's the end result.  

For the second tray, cheese was added in the final 2 minutes of bake time.  But that wasn't quite enough for the cheese to brown up.  And I ended up adding another 2 minutes to the bake time.  Of course there was the worry about the bread over-baking and drying out, but luckily, the 2 minute impact wasn't significant.

Back to baking

It has been a year and three months since the last post.

It started with procrastination, and unknowingly but inevitably, laziness took over.  

Back to baking again.  The Hubby bought me a new oven, a much bigger one compared to the last one I had.  So much more spacious and user-friendly.  Temperature came in digital setting, which means I don't have to make estimated dials of 165 deg C or 205 deg C.

New oven, new baking experiment.

This is it.

I had always wanted to try bread making.  But never got down to doing it earlier.  I was afraid of yeast and using yeast.  I can't quite understand the fear of yeast.  Not phobia type of fear, but I suppose it was some sort of misconception about the difficulty of using yeast, or getting the yeast to work properly. 

Anyhow, I've gotten over the uncertainty.  

Very simple, easy to get ingredients can be put together to create these cute-looking mounds.  

It is all hand-made.  No appliance involved, of course the oven is beside the point.

I cannot imagine myself having the patience to go through the full process of bread-making.

Mixing the liquid into the dry ingredients, kneading the dough till window-pane stage, first stage of proofing, shaping and second stage of proofing before sending these little smooth mounds of well-risen dough into the oven.

It was tough work kneading the dough purely by hand.  But it was definitely satisfactory.  

This batch was actually the fourth attempt.  It was still not as soft as I would have liked it to be.  Perhaps a little more moisture or fat would help.  It wasn't salty enough too.  But I am worried that adding a little more salt would kill the yeast.  Never mind, just give it a try.  Next round of bread-making, add a little more salt and a little more fat.  

The round ones with sesame seeds and the swirl are plain rolls.  Those at the back, elongated olive shapes have sausages as filling.