{Update: after some changes to the oven temperature, these buns have turned ultra soft.}
It’s amazing how baking these buns using almost similar honey milk rolls recipe at 20C lower turned them even softer, though not as white as I wanted them to be. I preheated the oven at 190C, then baked at 150C for 15 minutes. Some bakers bake these in preheated oven at 150C, not 190C, and produced beautiful white buns. I am going to use this oven setting for my next bake.
In fact going by how soft these have turned out, I am going to be baking all my bun recipes at 150C from now on.
Once again, I dust the buns with rice flour before sending them into the oven for baking, totally optional.
Ultra Soft Haiji Buns
190g unbleached plain flour 30g wholemeal flour 1 teaspoon instant yeast 1/4 teaspoon sea salt 100g mashed taro 2 tablespoons raw honey 80g fresh milk 25g cold butter, cubed optional : rice flour for dusting
In a mixer bowl, place the dry ingredients: white flour, wholemeal flour, instant yeast, and sea salt, mix these dry ingredients well with a hand whisk. Next, add cooled mashed taro, raw honey, and half of the fresh milk to the dry ingredients, and knead with a dough hook attachment on the lowest speed (KA 1). Slowly add the remaining of the fresh milk with the mixer running, you may need more or less of the milk stated in the recipe. Watch the dough, when the ingredients come into a ball, stop adding milk and turn off the mixer. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes.
Start the mixer running on its lowest speed again to knead the dough for 1 minute, before adding cubed butter, one by one. Knead until the dough reaches window pane stage, this is when the dough becomes very smooth and elastic, and starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Remove the bowl from mixer, cover with tea towel, and bulk rise for 1 hour.
After an hour, the dough should rise to double its volume, punch it down to release the gas, and transfer to a clean work top. My dough was still sticky, so I sprinkle plain flour on the work top and dough to make shaping more manageable. Flatten the dough to push out gas trapped inside the dough. Divide dough into 9 equal portions, I weigh out each dough at about 55g each. Shape each portion into a ball and place it in a greased tray, seam side facing downwards. Using a chopstick (I used this for this bake) or rolling pin (I am going to use this for next bake, as I noticed that the fine line between the dough disappear after the final proof) and make a straight line dent in the middle of the bun, dent should bedeep enough without cutting the bun into half.
Let the buns sit in a draft free place to rise for another 50-60 minutes. I topped my bread dough with rice flour before baking, purely for decorative purpose, totally optional.
Preheated oven at 190C, place the buns in and set the oven at 150C and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the bread from the pan immediately after baking, and let it cool on a rack completely serving.
Store in an airtight container if not consumed immediately, to keep the buns soft and the crumbs from drying out.
MONO and CO 