A couple weeks ago, I had an ENTIRE day off from work. AN ENTIRE DAY!!! What a luxury!!! All you M-F 9-5ers are probably like, “gurrrrl what are you freaking out over, that ain’t anything special.” But to us sunday-saturday 8-5 even 8-6ers, THAT IS FRICKEN RARE, LIKE SHINY-CHARIZARD-POKEMON-CARD-RARE. For once, I had time to recharge and do my own thing again.
So, to celebrate, I took this opportunity to do something different. I took the opposite path and went savoury. Oh mannn it was tough road. I mean, I’m fully literate when it comes to sweets but when it comes to savoury, I’m clueless, dude! Then, I made a super logical choice to make something I’m completely terrible at: yeast breads. Cuz yenno, it totally makes sense to add more challenges to your ONE day off right?
I did my best to channel my inner Christina Tosi and be creative but my science-trained brain wouldn’t give so the best I could come up with was Chinese sausage cheese buns. The flavour was awesome! Chinese sausage and cheese works! The part where I could definitely improve is the bread part. I don’t know if it’s because I’m kneading too much or too little or my kitchen isn’t warm enough for the yeast to do its thang but the bread didn’t turn out fluffy. It kinda turned spongey, elastic and rather stunted in height. Oh well, you win, some you lose some.
Chinese Sausage Cheese Buns
Ingredients
Mother Dough
- 550 g all purpose flour
- 12 g flaked sea salt
- 3.5 g or 1/2pkg of active dry yeast
- 1 3/4 cups water room temperature
- oil
Filling
- 2 Chinese-style sausages diced
- Grated cheese of your liking
Instructions
Mother Dough
- Stir flour, salt, yeast in bowl of stand mixer with dough hook
- Slowly add water and mixture for 1 minute until the mixture comes together into a straggly mass
- Mix on low speed for 3 minutes until dough is smoother
- Mix on low for another 4 minutes until dough comes into a ball shape and bounces back softly when poked
- Brush a bowl with oil and put the dough in it.
- Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough proof at room temp for 45 minutes (this is where things went wrong for me, I would cover it with a clean tea towel and put it into a warm oven/warming drawer next time)
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
- Dust your work station with flour and roll out the dough into a long rectangle
- Sprinkle sausage and cheese over the surface
- Starting at the longer edge, slowly roll the dough and filling into a tight log
- Slice with a bench scraper or with unflavoured dental floss into 12 even pieces
- Grease a 9x13 baking pan (I used Baker' Secret brand) and place pieces in 3 rows of 4
- Optional: Brush tops and sides with egg wash using pastry brush
- Bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops are golden brown and cheese is sizzling
Did you make this recipe?
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Dough Recipe from Momofuku MilkBar Cookbook