For my family, buns get consumed faster than sliced bread loaf, whether store-bought or homemade. So it makes a lot of sense to be baking bamboo charcoal buns since I am trying to finish a bottle of the charcoal powder by year end. I fiddled around with the usual potato bread recipe by adding more fats and reducing mashed potato amount to 100g. The end result : 4 huge and fluffy buns.
I coated the dough with dried grated cheese, got them with my pasta/ pizza takeaways. If you have them in your pantry, add them, if not, omit them. Personally, I do not purchase these powdered cheese as they taste more like salty MSG flavoring than cheese. You bet I will be making these buns with real cheese topping very soon.
Charcoal Potato Dried Cheese Buns
220g plain flour 1/2 tablespoon instant dry yeast 1/4 teaspoon sea salt 1/4 teaspoon bamboo charcoal powder 2 tablespoons raw sugar 100g mashed potato 1 large egg ** 40g potato water *** 40g cold butter, cubed 20g dried grated cheese, optional
** I used an egg that weighs 70g with shell.
*** Potato water refers to the water that is left behind after cooking the potatoes with. Cool it down to room temperature before adding them to the rest of the ingredients.
In a mixer bowl, combine plain flour, instant yeast, sea salt, bamboo charcoal powder, raw sugar with a hand whisk to stir the dry ingredients into a uniform mixture.
Add mashed potato, beaten egg, and potato water. Turn on the electric mixer and knead the ingredients on the lowest speed (KA 1) until they come into a ball. Continue to knead for about 3 minutes and then turn off the mixer and let this dough stand for 15 minutes.
Turn on the mixer to knead the dough for 1 minute, before adding cubed butter, one by one, while the mixer is running. Continue to knead even after no traces of butter can be seen, until the dough reach window pane stage, this is when the dough becomes super stretchy and soft, though slightly sticky. You can tell that you have reached this stage when the dough looks being lifted completely from the bottom and pulling itself away cleanly from the side of the mixing bowl, leaving no messy traces of dough behind. At this stage, stop the mixer and leave the dough to rise in the covered mixer bowl for 60 minutes.
The dough should rise to double its volume. Punch down the dough to deflate it and transfer it to a clean work top. The dough will be sticky, dust hands and worktop with a little flour. Divide the dough into 4 equal portions. Flatten each dough to push out any gas trapped inside the dough, shape them into balls. Holding the seam side of the ball dough, dip it into a small plate filled with grated cheese to coat the top side of the bread with the cheese before arranging it on a greased baking pan, seam side downwards. Repeat until all 4 doughs are shaped and leave the pan in a draft-free place, covered with a clean towel, to have a final proof of 50 minutes.
Bake the buns in a preheat oven at 170C for 20-25 minutes. Remove them from the pan and leave to cool completely.
MONO and CO 