Having lived most of my early life in South East Asia, I was pampered with varieties of good food. One of my favorite snacks is Asian type sweet soft bread filled with varieties of filling. The filling can be sweet or salty.
One of my sweet childhood memories is when my parents brought me to buy baked filled bread from Teck Kee Tanglin Pau. I loved the smell of the freshly baked bread, the taste of sweet meat filling of the bread and the trips to the shop with my parents.
Although we lived in other continent now, we also introduce our kids to varieties of food, including Asian food and snacks. The baked bread filled with sweet meat has also become one of the children favorite snacks or to-go-lunch options. I sometimes fill their lunch box with this type of bread.
Usually, I used tangzhong bread recipe to make this bread. However, I felt that it was sometimes quite troublesome to prepare the tangzhong in advance. Therefore, I searched the internet for the possible replacement for the tangzhong. An idea for that is using either sour cream or fresh cream with minimal 25% fat content. I saw some bread recipe in the internet using either sour cream or other thick cream.
I tried to incorporate the cream as replacement of tangzhong in my to-go filled bread recipe. The result was satisfying. It was soft and as airy as the one using tangzhong. The advantage of using cream is that we do not have to make the tangzhong in advance. But, of course the use of cream increases the content of fat in the bread. If you don't mind the fat content, you can use this recipe instead of the recipe with tangzhong method.
My family, who always acted as my tester, found this recipe was also a keeper.
For the filling, you can also refer to my previous recipe hier.
Ingredients:
- To make the dough, combine all dough ingredient (note: this can be done because the yeast used here is instant yeast) except the fresh cream and butter in the stand mixer bowl. Using the hook attachment, knead the ingredients until you get a dough form and the gluten begins to develop.
- Knead in the cream and butter until the dough is smooth and does not stick to the wall of the bowl and to your hand. To double check if the gluten has developed enough, you can stretch the dough. If the dough can be stretched easily to form a thin membrane, and you can light through the membrane, then the dough is ready.
- Shape the dough into a ball shape. Put it back into the bowl, cover with cling film (plastic wrap) and place it in the refrigerator to proof until the next day or put it somewhere warm until it's doubled in size. As an alternative, proof it in a warm environment (the best is 28 degree Celcius) for 1 hour, or until it's doubled in size.
- After the dough rise double in size, punch down the dough and roll into a long shape. Cut into 16 equal size pieces (around 55-60 grams per piece).
- Roll the dough into a thin layer and fill in the dough with filling.
- Cover the filling with the dough and pinch the edges and press it to make sure that the filling will not leak out.
- Carefully pinch up the edges and press together, ensuring the filling is well sealed.
- Place the pressed side down onto the baking trays lined with baking paper. Cover them with damp tea towel and let them rest for around 1 hour for last proving. (I sometimes use cling wrap to cover them and keep them in a warm cabinet. At least that method works for me).
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Brush the top of the bread with beaten egg, sprinkle the bread with roasted black sesame seed and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. I usually bake two trays with upper and below heat sources and exchange the positions of the trays halfway the baking time.
