INTRODUCTION

This is a simple dough recipe that I would like to recommend readers to consider keeping for preparing common breakfast buns. It is is easy and faster to prepare and yields a soft and fluffy bread. It can be used for many buns, donuts and even pizza.

I usually prepare about 500 grams of dough (flour only), used the portion I wanted , deep freeze the dough and used in for the next few bakes. For more detail of Deep freezing and thawing frozen dough, please refer to: Freezing And Thawing Yeasted Bread Dough.

In this post I will share the basic dough recipe, shaping of plum blossom sausage buns and pizza crust.

Using the same bread dough and with slight modifications in various batches, I have prepared the following:

Hot dog Buns

Deep fried donuts

Red Bean Flower Sweet Buns

Blueberry Sweet Bread

Hamburger Buns

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Servings: about 1 kilo of bread dough

Bread dough

• 500 grams of bread flour
• 100 grams of sugar
• 5 grams of salt
• 11 grams (1 packet) of instant dry yeast
• 30 grams of butter (melted) or cooking oil
• 1 egg
• 220 grams of plain water

For Plum Sausage Buns

• 5 sausages
• 1 egg
• Some spring onion or parsley
• 250 grams of  frozen dough
• Pinches of salt
• 1 teaspoon of cooking oil

STEPS OF PREPARATION

Preparation of basic dough

• In a mixing  bowl, mixed all the ingredients  together. Use a spoon to slightly stir it until it form a sticky dough. Use the dough hook in the machine to beat the dough at medium to low speed (speed 2 in Kenwood Chef or Kitchen Aid) for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, change from medium to high speed (speed 4 kin Kenwood Chef or Kitchen Aid) for about 7 minutes until the dough is smooth and leaves the side of the mixing bowl. Transfer the dough out to a lightly flour surface.

• Lightly knead for 1-2 minutes and let it proof until double in size. Cover the dough with a wet towel or clingy wrap. Proofing time will depends on the weather but it will take about more or less 30 minutes in Singapore weather.

• After first proofing, take the portion of dough you want to use and keep the others in the freezer. Best practise is to let the proof dough go into the freezer in a bowl without wrapping. Once the dough cool down about 1 hour later, wrap the dough in some clingy wrap and place in an air tight container. The reason for this step is to avoid water vapour condensation that may wet your dough when you are defrosting. Once the yeast is dormant, no more carbon dioxide will be released and wrapping the dough will not yield any water condensation droplets.

Preparation of Pizza Crust

Note that this pizza crust was prepared using fresh dough and the remaining I have used it for the preparation of plum blossom sausage buns as shared below.

• Put some of the fresh dough (after first proofing), shape round and put on a piece of baking paper. Put on top of the dough ball another piece of baking paper. Roll the ball using a rolling pin in a round shape the size and thickness you want. Let it proof until it double in size and bake in the pre-heated oven of 190 degree Celsius for 10-15 minutes.

• Continue the preparation of pizza by putting your desired topping and baked again until the cheeses melts.

Note:

• I have used 250 grams for making two 9” pizzas but that depends on how thick and how big you want your pizza to be. Therefore, some discretion on the quantity used is needed when you prepare the dough).

• If you want thin and crispy pizza, your dough should be much smaller and your thickness of dough before proofing should be about 2 mm. (end pizza thickness = 4 mm) For thicker pizza, generally the dough thickness should be about 5 mm before proofing. (end pizza thickness = 1 cm)

Preparation Of Plum Blossom Sausage Buns

Note that I have prepared this plum blossom sausage buns based on the frozen dough that I prepared for the pizza crust earlier. It was deep froze for about a week.

• Take out the frozen dough, once the dough is slightly soft and can be cut by knife (5 minutes later), cut 5 dough of 50 grams each. Let it defrost in the room temperature until completely soft. As this is a small dough, therefore, defrosting is very fast and probably it will take about 10 minutes depending on the day’s weather.

• Once the dough is soft, put in a flour surface, roll the dough using a rolling pin into a square shape following the length of your sausage. Put a sausage on top of the dough. Pat the dough with some flour if there are some water vapour condensation on the dough.

• Use the dough to roll up the sausage. Cut into 5 equal pieces. Twist the dough such that the five cut surfaces of the sausage face upwards. Don’t worry that your twisting will be ugly, as long as the cut sausage is of the same length/size and the dough properly wrapped the sausages, it will look okay after second proofing and final baking.

• Pre=heat the oven to 190 degree Celsius.

• Get ready a bowl, mix the egg, pinches of salt , chopped onion or parsley and cooking oil. Stir until well combined. If you wish, you can add other spices such as black pepper or substitute with oregano.

• After second proofing, take a small spoon and put some of the egg mixture on the centre of the sausage dough. If there are extra, just brush it on the side of the buns. Bake in the pre-heated oven of 190 degree Celsius for 10-12 minutes or when the bread turn golden brown.

CONCLUSION

If this basic dough recipe works for many bakes, why is there a need to keep many recipes… A rather long post and hope  I  did not miss out any point ..

Hope you like the post today. Cheers and have a nice day.

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