Pumpkin and fig bread / Chocolate chips and red bean swirl bun

 

 

It's CNY, and the baking doesn't stop. Instead, I have extra time at home to try out more bread recipes. This recipe is just a variation of the previous purple sweet potato bun recipe. I love using this recipe for my bread maker/ bread machine, it yields really soft and fluffy bun, which stays soft for at least 12-18hours. But if you're kneading by hand, this is not the best recipe cos the water ratio is quite high and it can be a tacky one to work with.

 

I continue to bake bread for my little fella, cos it's CNY, whenever we visit or whenever there's a family gathering, there's food and snacks. I had to give him some home-baked stuffs so that he'll not simply over-indulge in those mass-produced sugar-laden cookies. He's a food-lover and he cant resist it when he sees us eating.

Also, I have some friends and classmates, with babies, over, some sort of a CNY mini-gathering at my place. So I decided to bake some of the bread with a filling I made with chocolate chips and red bean in a pretty cupcake liner from a friend in Hong Kong.

Here's the recipe for the bread dough

Starter dough (pre-gelatinized dough) recipe adapted from Alex Goh's

• 100g bread flour
• 70g boiling water

Add boiling water into the bread flour. Combine, making sure each part of flour gets in touch with the water. Store in fridge for at least one hour or up to 24hours before use.

Main bread dough recipe:

• 350g bread flour 
• 120g pumpkin and 2 dried fig (steam until cooked or soft enough to puree)
• 100g milk (Puree cooked pumpkin and fig with milk until achieve creamy consistency, let cool)
• 50g oil, I used grapeseed oil
• 3tbsp brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2tbsp 10-grain powder (or soy powder) 
• 1tbsp yeast

Filling (recipe adapted from smitten kitchen)

• 1.5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 25g ground brown sugar
• 100g semisweet chocolate
• 100g cooked red bean
• Pinch of salt

Preparation of filling: Roughly chop the chocolate. Chop butter into little cube size. Mix all ingredients, except for red bean until all are even mixed. Add in red bean. Set aside.

 

Topping

• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 teaspoons (10 ml) heavy cream or milk
• Molasses sugar, to sprinkle

1. Add all the ingredients into the bread machine in this order: pumpkin and fig milk puree, oil, brown sugar, pinch of salt, bread flour, 10-grain powder and the pre prepared starter dough, in little pieces. Lastly, make a little well in the flour and place in the yeast.
2. Turn on the bread-kneading and proofing mode and let the bread machine does it work.
3. After the first proof, bring the dough out, punch it down and let rest for 10min.
4. Take half of the dough and roll into a rectangular shape. Sprinkle the chocolate chip-red bean filling over the rectangular dough's surface. Roll the dough, forming a log. With a serratated knife, gently saw about 6 segment off the log and place in a cupcake liner. Cover with cling film and let rise for another 45min. Brush the top of buns with a mixture of beaten egg and milk, and sprinkle with molasses sugar.
5. For the other half of the dough, I just shape into 60g round bun shape without any filling. 
6. Bake at 170deg C for about 20min.