Sweet Berry Bun 莓子奶酥甜面包

In my collection of bread recipes, there are not many berry flavoured breads 🤔 In fact, when I googled "strawberry bread" to search, I was surprised that there are limited of them too. Apparently, the presence of enzymes and citric acid in the berries, which may hinder the fermentation or gluten of the dough, explained the scarcity of berry bread recipe 🙄

I was lucky that my two key ingredients - the luscious berries juice and strawberry jam, allowed my dough to be kneaded successfully. Happy to be able to bake these soft buns with sweet berry aroma 😁

I cheated the pink color of the bread by adding beetroot powder as the fruit juice and jam was too light to be visible.

I love the milk crumb filling with cranberry bits which complement the berries flavoured bread well. The term "milk crumb" may not be the proper translation of the words "奶酥". Since it resembled loose crumbs​, so I just tagged​ the word "crumbs" to the filling's name 😬

You can prepare the filling a day in advance together with the dough.

Cranberry Milk Crumb Filling

Ingredients:

60g unsalted butter, softened

35 icing sugar

60 g full cream milk powder

10g Parmesan cheese powder

20g beaten egg

12g corn starch

20g dried cranberries

Directions:

1. Cream the softened butter until loose.

2. Add in the icing sugar and mix well.

3.  Blend in the the beaten egg, followed by Parmesan cheese powder, milk powder and corn starch. 

4. Use a pair of kitchen scissors to cut the dried cranberries into bit size.

5. Add the cranberry bits to the mixture at (3), and mix well.

6. When well combined, transfer the paste into a plastic bag. Wrap up into a log shape, and store in the freezer or fridge compartment for at least one hour to harden it.

7. After 1 hour, or when the paste has hardened, divides it into 9 equal portions. 

Returns to the fridge till needed during shaping.

Bread Dough

Portions: 9 x 8cm round buns

Raw dough weight: 534g

Ingredients

60g cold Luscious Berries juice/milk

60g cold water
20g strawberry jam

25g beaten egg
30g fine sugar
1/4 tsp fine salt, 2g

210g unbleached bread flour
25g superfine wholegrain flour/plain flour

12g milk powder
1/4 tsp beetroot powder (optional)*

50g natural yeast (100% hydration)∆

1/4 tsp instant dry yeast

To be added at the 10th minute

20g cold unsalted butter

* the beetroot powder can be bought from Fairprice Finest. You can replace the beetroot powder either by food colouring, or bake without it.

∆ 50g natural yeast can be replaced by 25g each of bread flour and water, as well as 1/4 tsp instant dry yeast.

Directions

1. Cut the bigger fruit chunks in the strawberry jam into finer bits.

2. Mix bread flour, superfine wholegrain flour, milk powder, and beetroot powder together.

3. Pour all the ingredients, except the cold butter, following their listed sequence, into the bread pan of a bread maker.

Natural yeast

4. Select "C-11 Ferment Dough" function and start the program.

Add in the cold butter at the 10th minutes after the kneading begins.

5. After the countdown timer reads 0:45, the kneading blade will rotate to turn the dough. Terminate the program manually by giving the "Stop" button a long press.

Transfer the dough to a plastic bag coated with a little vegetable oil. Tie a loose knot at the end, and let the dough sits in room temperature for about 15 minutes.

After the 15-minute rest, wrap the dough with a second plastic bag, and keep in a cover bowl or box.

Refrigerate for about 12 to 16 hours (overnight).

In the next morning, remove the outer plastic bag, invert the dough and thaw for about 1 hour before shaping.

6. Invert out the dough onto a floured work top. Deflate the dough and divide into 9 even portions.

Shape the doughs into balls, cover and rest for about 15 minutes.

7. Take a dough and roll it out into a flat round dough, with the centre thicker than the edge.

Flip over the dough and place a cold cranberry-butter filling chunk in the centre.

Wrap up and seal tightly. 

It is important to seal the seams properly to prevent the melted filling from oozing out during baking .

Cup your hand and roll the dough within to shape into a ball shape.

Arrange the dough onto a lightly floured non-stick baking tray with good spacing in between doughs.

8. Spray some water over he doughs.

Keep the doughs in a closed oven to undergo 2nd fermentation for about 50 to 60 minutes.

9. While waiting, you can cut some stencils using parchment paper to create some patterns​ over the bread later.

10. When the dough has double in size,  remove the dough from oven, and preheat the oven to 180°Celsius. While waiting, sprinkle some flour over the top of the dough if you're not making any pattern on the bread. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.

Slightly wet the paper stencils, and lightly place on top of each dough.

Sprinkle some leftover bread flour over using a sift.

Remove the paper stencils, 

and sprinkle some bread flour over.

Done 😉

11. After transferring the dough into the oven, lower the temperature to 160° Celsius and bake for 10 minutes. Bake at the lower rack.

After 10 minutes, further reduce the oven temperature to 150°Celsius and bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or till the top slightly brown.

End of baking.

12. Transfer the buns out of the pan, and cool over a wire rack.

13. Enjoy 😋

Keep the unconsumed buns in a fridge, and heat up before serving 😊