My colleagues from work make very nice professional Italian bread, they bring me some to try every now and then, I am so impressed because they taste so much softer and fresher than those you buy from bakery shops. I thought it shouldnt be too difficult to make like those baking programs on tv, I was so curious to try to make my own, then I realized making bread do require some skills! it was very fun though with all sticky hands :-P especially I picked this cute panda bread recipe from Not Quite Nigella which I have been eyeing on for a while.
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Panda Bread
Ingredients:
Makes approximately 600g/21ozs loaf (206mm x 108mm x100mm high)270g/9.5ozs all purpose flour
30g/1oz cornflour
30g/1oz sugar
Milk + 1 egg yolk = 21 0g/7.4ozs
4.5g/0.18ozs salt
20g/0.7 ozs unsalted butter (I used 20g)
4g/0.14ozs yeast
8g/0.28ozs green tea powder dissolved in 2 tablespoons boiling hot water
8g/0.28ozs cocoa powder dissolved in 2 tablespoons boiling water
Method:
1. Heat up milk and yolk to temperature of 38℃/100F. (I beat the yolk lightly with milk and send it to the microwave on High for 30 seconds).2. Place flours, salt, yeast, sugar in an electric mixer fitted with a Dough Hook and set on low setting to combine. Then add milk and egg mixture and softened butter and knead on low setting for 5-6 minutes until elastic.
3. Divide dough (about 560g or just over 1 pound) into 3 parts: 75g/2.64ozs for the chocolate, 210g/7.4ozs plain and the rest of the dough which is less than 280g/9.8ozs for the green tea.
4. Add chocolate to the 75g/2.64ozs dough and knead till the colour is even. Add green tea mixture to the 280g/9.8ozs dough and knead till colour is even. If you do these manually, make sure that your hands and bench space where you need are cleaned between kneading to avoid transferring the colours.
5. Prove all 3 pieces of doughs on separate greased plates covered loosely with oiled cling wrap for 30 – 40 minutes.
6. Punch air out of dough and prove for another 20 – 30 minutes.
7. Use 90g/3ozs plain dough for the face and 2 pieces of 27g/1oz chocolate dough for the eyes.
8. Fill the hollow of the eyes with 30g/1oz plain dough.
9. Roll remaining plain dough over the patterned dough.
10. Divide the remaining chocolate dough into 2 pieces (17.5g each/0.61ozs) for the ears.
11. Use 70g/2.47ozs of the green tea dough to fill up the hollow between the ears.
12. Wrap the rest of the green tea dough all around the patterned dough.
13. Place dough into a well-greased loaf pan and cover it with a lid and prove for 50 – 60 minutes in an enclosed are. As it’s cold here and we’re in the middle of Winter, I set the pan in a larger container filled with warm water and refreshed the water with hot water 3-4 times to make sure that it rose.
