Red bean buns and a great way to make fluffier bread

While grocery shopping one day I came upon some read bean paste – something I could probably make at home from the dried beans but this was so much easier. (I don’t always have to make stuff from scratch…) Images of desserts and buns and other things I could make from the paste immediate came to mind. And so I bought some and when I got home, looked up some recipes that included the red bean paste.

And I came upon red bean buns. Such a simple bun, and yet so good. I’ve been making bread for a while, so how hard could making these buns be? Not difficult at all really, just a bit of time. One interesting thing I learned while looking up recipes is that it uses a tangzhong or Hokkaido style roux of water and flour, in a 5:1 ratio, respectively, cooked to 65 degrees C.

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Once it gets to temperature, the roux will be thicker and look like this, when stirred with chopsticks.

This roux helps to make the resulting bread/bun extra soft and pliable – and supposedly makes it last longer before going stale (though I haven’t verified this myself yet).  I haven’t included the recipe here – there are tons on the net, both steamed and baked styles. I’ll just show a few of the (admittedly horrible) photos I took in the process of making them.

 

30 gram rolled red bean balls.

50 gram pieces of dough, flattened out and wrapped around the red bean paste.

Wet finger, dip in sesame seeds and then poke finger into the centre of the buns.

Aaaand we ate them all before I could (remember to) take a picture of them.