Happy April
Fool everyone. Hope you didn’t any heart attack joke. Easter is now officially
3 weeks to go which mean another holiday/ celebration time. Unfortunately I will
need to dig my head into my book and study for exam at the end of April (at
least I have more time to study while everyone going out for holiday). But that’s
fine; I can still have my own mini Easter party with my family by having a huge
Easter feast with my family.
Since the
last Easter Idea of Yoghurt Panna Cotta in Easter chocolate Egg, I’m going to
show you another popular Easter food which you can easily find in store or
bakery - Hot Cross Bun. My dad use to get them when I was young but back then I
didn’t appreciate the flavour of cinnamon and sultana as much and so do my mum.
So I did a different version by substitute cinnamon and sultana with brown
sugar and cranberry. I love the taste of brown sugar more than caster sugar as
it has some slightly cane sugar aroma and also make the taste has more layers.
And Cranberry has been quiet a popular dried
fruit in the past few years, I like it not as sweet as sultana and has a
little bit sour taste as well.
Before I don’t
normally make bread because I thought it very time consuming but ever since I received
a bread machine for Christmas present, we rarely get bread from store now but
instead we bought tons and tons of bread flour. However the bread from bread
machine tend to go dry and hard the next day, so I’ve done some research and
found this amazing secret of bread. In this recipe, I will be using Tangzhong
or water roux for my Hot Cross Bun. You will not believe just this one little
extra step can make so much difference.
From what I research,
it was invented by Japanese baker who mixed flours and water in a ratio of 1:5
and boil it up to 65degree until you can draw a line. This partial cooked dough
can help your bread recipe absorb more water and that the secret weapon for
those soft and spongy bread you can found in Bakery (mostly Asian style
bakery). You can use this trick in all other bread recipe you have, you just
need to measure the total weight of your bread recipe and substitute 20-25% of
Tangzhong with the ratio of 1 flour:5 water, then the rest of the step is the
same. 
Ingredient
Secret Weapon – Tangzhong Water Roux
(2 batch)
50g bread
Flour
125ml milk
125ml water
(You can
either use all water or all milk)
Hot Cross Bun (9 Pieces)
110ml milk
1 egg
100g Tangzhong or Water
Roux
45g Brown
Sugar
1 Teaspoon
Salt
350g Bread
Flour
6g Instant Dry
Yeast
40g Butter,
Melted
½ cup dried
cranberry
For Hot Cross topping
4 tablespoon
flour
3-3
tablespoon water
1 teaspoon
sugar
1) To make the
secret ingredient first, mix the flour with milk and water until all flour
dissolve and no lump.
2) Cook in low-medium
heat and keep stirring, if you have a thermometer, cook the water roux up to
65C or until you can draw a ribbon on the batter. This amount should be enough
to make 2 batches; you can leave it in the fridge for up to 3 days.
3) Transfer to
bowl and cool down, cover the water roux with cling wrap to prevent surface
dried out.
4) Put all
ingredients into bread maker according to instruction (The order should be
milk, Tangzhong, sugar, salt, flour and yeast put in last).
5) Select Dough
mode in your bread machine. Once you saw all ingredients start to form a dough
pour in the melted butter and dry cranberry in.
6) Once your
bread maker finishes the dough process, poke a hole into the dough if it don't bounce back, your dough is finished.
7) Transfer the
dough into a slightly flour bench top, press down the dough to get the air out.
Cut into 9 pieces. Use a rolling pin to roll flat the dough and fold it like a dumpling
to make a ball like dough.
8) Line a square
18cmx18cm pan with baking paper and transfer the ball dough into the pan.
9) Cover the pan
with towel or cling wrap to prevent the dough drying out. Let the dough rise
for another 1-1.5 hours until it rise and dough touching each other. (If the
temperature in the room is not hot enough, prepare a bowl of warm water and
water bath the pan.)
11) Combine the sugar,
flour and water until well combined. Transfer to pipping bag.
12) Brush the bun
with egg on the top and pipe the flour mixture on top to create the “Cross”.
13) Bake for
20-23 minuted. Once finished let it cool down for 5 minute before transfer to
wire.
Bon Appetite.
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