Monday, October 05, 2009

September Bread Baking Buddies round-up

Edited to include and present you with all our Bread Baking Buddies!

My initial thought was that the roundup this month wasn't very long, but it seems I called too soon. Already 6 Buddies -and still counting!- showed up with their Chinese flower buns. Thanks for baking all of you! (Please let me know if you baked and I didn't include you in the roundup, I'll add your name to the list!).

I think the overall opinion was that however pretty, the buns could be a bit bland and really needed a dip of some sorts. The recipe itself needed some tweaking as well, the chinese flour mentioned may have resulted in softer buns but most of us baked with what we had; I have a feeling that better buns were created using a mix of flours, substituting a part of regular flour with a less gluten flour such as rice flour, corn starch etc., upping the baking powder and yeast a bit. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the notes on my tweaks).

Aparna was steaming buns in My Diverse Kitchen, she used rice flour in addition to regular ap flour and served them with a nice nice sauce!
AnneMarie had a go at them at Rosemary&Garlic, decided to go for all cake flour and was happy with the outcome, maybe trying some other variations soon!
More buns were found by Singing Horse in her kitchen over at Vox, using a blend of ap flour and tapioca starch.

Karin steamed at Karin's Kitchen, she didn't like the outcome but she did it anyway!
Jane made these as a true Jane of many trades for a birthday treat, together with her own recipe for filled steamed buns and I must say that those look delicious!
And... Andreas send in his steamed buns as well, ingenious knotting didn't keep him from enjoying them.
Nidhi over at Charche Chauke Ke agreed that flour is key here, found the required Chinese flour for the buns and as a result got the sought after soft and tender knots! Bravo!

3 comments:

  1. Great round up! These were really fun to try.

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  2. They look great! I had lots of fun with this bread too - thanks so much for introducing us to some new techniques.

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  3. OK, I know what I'm making next weekend. Thanks!

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