Anpan

There was supposed to be another bread post between the apple cinnamon rolls and anpan, where I discussed my adventures with brioche, but it probably doesn't matter, and Mpanda wanted me to post about anpan. Anpan is a sweet Japanese bun, filled with red bean, and even though I'm not supposed to eat it, I do anyway. I think I had it for breakfast nearly every day when we were in Japan!

The recipe I followed was this one: http://www.justonecookbook.com/anpan/ (and I have been drooling over the rest of her blog). She has a video and instructions with photos, which was super helpful. I also tried making this recipe dairy-free, and egg-free. The dairy-free and egg-free attempt didn't go so well. The taste was nice, but the glaze didn't really turn out as nice (as you'll see in photos at the moment). The photo above is from the dairy-free-only attempt.

Ingredients
225 g (1 ¾ cup) bread flour and extra for sprinkling
25 g (scant ¼ cup) cake flour (No cake flour? The author says 1cup minus 2tbsp of plain flour + 2 tbsp of cornstarch = 1 cup of cake flour)
50 g (¼ cup) granulated sugar
4 g (1 tsp.) kosher salt
3 g (1 tsp.) instant dry yeast
1 large egg (46-50 g/ml) - or one egg's equivalent of No-egg egg replacement powder
50 ml (3 ½ Tbsp.) soy milk
50 ml (3 ½ Tbsp.) water, keep at 86F (30C)
35 g (2 ½ Tbsp.) Nuttelex buttery butter substitute

(optional)
I tried the tangzhong method again here, and I think it made it slightly softer, but I'm not 100% sure it made a noticeable difference. If you want to do it too, you'll also need:
12.5g bread flour (roughly 1/8 cup)
5/8 cup of water

Filling
280 g (35 g x 8) Anko, sweet azuki red bean paste (I found some at the Asian supermarket)

Toppings
1 egg
2 Tbsp. water (replace with soy milk if you want it to be more brown)
2 tsp. black sesame seeds

Method
(slight variation to the website)
If you are using the tangzhong, put the 12.5g of flour and 5/8 cups water on a small saucepan, and heat over low heat, whisking constantly until your whisk starts to leave a trail and it becomes a bit paste-like. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

(all methods)
Heat the water to the required temp, and add the yeast, giving it a stir so that all the yeast gets submerged in the water. Allow to sit while you mix the rest of the stuff.

Mix the bread flour, cake flour, sugar, salt in a bowl. Add the egg or egg replacement, and soymilk. It'll be a bit dry and lumpy at this stage, that's OK. If using the tangzhong, add it now. Then add the water + yeast and stir until all combined. If you used the tangzhong, you might find it's quite wet at this stage, so slowly add more flour until it doesn't stick to the bowl.

Lightly flour a flat surface / pastry mat, and begin kneading the dough (fold it over on itself, and press down to flatten it, then rotate 90 degrees and repeat). It might be a bit sticky, so keep adding flour to your surface / hands while you knead.

After about 5 minutes, once you find you can stretch it without breaking, stretch it out to about 25cm, add the Nuttelex along the dough, and roll it up. Then continue kneading. It will get messy right about now. Just trust me that if you keep going, it'll start to smooth out. If you've been going at it for 10 minutes, and it's still crazily sticky, then slowly add a bit of flour at a time. You do NOT want to add too much flour - that's the mistake I made once, and I'll never make it again. If you do, your bread will be heavy and yucky.

The author says to use the windowpane test to see when it's ready, and unfortunately, I couldn't take a photo while I was doing it, because my hands were tied up, so you'll have to see her blog for a photo of what that means.

Once it's ready, fold the sides under the dough into the middle, so it wraps into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap, and leave in a warm place for 2 hours to proof.

After two hours, it should have increased in size. If you can poke into it, and it doesn't spring back into a smooth ball, you are ready for the next stage!

Back to the pastry mat (I didn't need any more flour at this stage to stop it sticking), flatten the dough out, and then fold it like a business letter: into third, folding one side in, then the other on top. Then rotate 90 degrees and do it again. Divide the dough into 8 pieces, and leave those pieces somewhere warm to proof for about 15 minutes.

Once that's done, starting with one piece, flatten that out, do the business letter fold, 90 degrees, another business letter fold. Flatten it out again, and fill with redbean paste (I put about a tablespoon or more in, but I really like red bean paste. In fact, one of the reasons I wanted to make this myself is because sometimes I get an anpan, and I think it's more like a bun that may contain traces of redbean, and I feel super ripped off! This way I can put as much as I like).

The flatter you get the dough at this point, the better, as your bun will be less bready and more redbeany! Fold the sides up over the red bean, and pinch together, then turn upside down and make sure the red bean is all sealed up (the seam should be on the bottom). Then gently press down on it to flatten it a bit so it's not just a ball.

Repeat with the others. I found that it helps to do the first egg glaze here, to get extra brown, but doing two egg glazes is optional. Anyway, mix the egg + water / milk for the glaze, and do one coating now if you like. Leave the buns in a warm place for 30 minutes. Now is a good time to pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees Celcius.

Do a coat of the glaze, and sprinkle the black sesame seeds on top.

Bake for 13-15 minutes, turn halfway if your oven doesn't heat evenly.

(This is from a one glaze batch.)

(This is from my failed attempt to make kumanpan / anpanda). This was also the no-egg version, and you can see how sad the glaze looks, it's not shiny at all. :( Apparently it's the egg yolk that gives the shine.

Mmmm, tasty red bean paste.