Sweet Sausage Bread (Asian Style)

Asian style bread is a sweeter, softer, more puffier type of bread in comparison to the bread we normally get in Australian supermarkets. I think it has something to do with the amount of milk and butter that gets added that gives its texture. There are many types of Asian style sweet bread and you can normally see a few shops in any china town selling red bean, tuna, chicken and our favourite, sausage.


The sausage bread ("Bao" in chinese means bread) is basically just a frankfrut in a bread. Like a hotdog but sweet. There are many dough recipes on the net and for my inspiration, I got the details from Warm and Sweet Home. I modified it a bit by using evaporated milk instead of normal milk and it turned out more similar to the ones we can buy in the asian bakeries.

I used a kitchenaid for mixing the dough. For anyone who likes to cook and bake, its a very good investment. Saves you time at the bench kneading and really helped a beginner like me because I always find dough kneading to be really tricky. A kitchenaid is especially handy for asian sweet bread because the dough is wetter and stickier. 

Ingredients

• 250g High Protein Flour
• 4g Yeast
• 20g Sugar
• 182g Evaporated Milk
• 25g Butter

Method

1. Mix ingredients together until it is smooth and satiny (Speed 2 of Kitchenaid)
2. Oil bowl with olive oil and cover dough for about 45-60 minutes (until it is 2-3 times bigger)
3. Punch out air
4. Divide Dough into 6 portions and leave it for 15 minutes
5. Roll individual dough portions into a long 'log' shape
6. To add the sausage, wrap the dough around the sausage over about 3 turns or more
7. Cover and leave dough to rise again for 45-60 minutes
8. Brush with evaporated milk or egg 
9. Bake for 180 degrees celcius (or 160 in a fan-forced oven) for 12-15 minutes

There is another method of making the dough using a 'starter' then mixing in the remaining 'main dough' ingredients (dough and sponge method). This makes it fluffier and has more flavour. Jo's Deli Bakery has a bit on tips about this. I think the next time I try it will be using the dough and sponge method, lets see how it goes.

What to do with left over Peanuts? (Chinese Peanut Cookies)

Came across an easy recipe for some Chinese Peanut Cookies the other day at A Table for Two.

I would skip the recipe this time as you can find it at the link above, but I couldn't believe that it was so simple. I had left over peanuts in the house and all I needed to do was grind them up, add a bit of sugar, flour, oil and a pinch of salt :)

The only difference was that I had a fan forced oven and the cookies kept turning out dark brown at the beginning. I decreased the temperature to 150°C and baked for 11 minutes instead of the recipe for 200°C at 17 minutes.

The best bit was that it gave me a chance to practice my photo taking, still have a long way to go, but here are some of them. I think I need to work on my styling a bit more - heehee, time for more practice :P

Before the Oven:

After the Oven:

Zucchini and Bacon Quiche

Happy Chinese New Year !

To celebrate our Chinese New Year this year we invited a few of our good friends over for a lunch as mostly everybody is busy due to family dinner plans. It was another chance for me to cook up something :)

The menu of the day became what I could find in the shops on Saturday which turned out to be chicken salad, some pastry wraps from Lenards and garlic bread :P That together with our fruits in the kitchen didn't seem to be quite enough for about 10 people with 4 guys ("why do guys eat more?") I remembered having a really nice zucchini slice at my other friends place earlier this year and decided to make a zucchini quiche as I still had some shortcrust pastry and whipping cream together with some zucchini in the house.

I've made a very nice quiche lorraine from a French recipe book called "The food of France) before but hadn't made a second one since. I wanted to add zucchini to the quiche but didn't know what other ingredients I should add to make it tasty. In my attempt to check out what's been tried and tested on the net, I came across a nice zucchini quiche recipe from Epicurious and also a zucchini slice recipe from taste.com.au. I'd probably try this one by itself next time, it looks very easy :)

With my homework done I set out to incorporate some of these ideas to the quiche lorraine recipe that I had tried.

Ingredients

• 1 Tart Pastry (I used pampas shortcrust pastry)
  
• 25g butter
• 300g diced bacon
• 250ml double cream (I substituted with 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of whipping cream)
  
• 4 Eggs
• 1/2 zucchini (was what I had left :P)
  
• 1/2 onion
• 1/4 teaspoon salt for the vegies
• 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper for the egg mixture
• Grated nutmeg to taste (I only had ground nutmeg and used about 1/2 teaspoon)
  

Prepare

• Prepare zucchini - scoop out the seeds to limit the moisture coming out. Cut it up in thin slices about 8x2cm wide.
• Prepare the onion and bacon- finely diced up
  

Method

1. Cook bacon first. Melt butter in a frying pan and cook til golden, leave the oil in the pan. Drain bacon on paper towels.
   
2. Cook the onion and zucchini with 1/4 teaspoon of salt til tender and browning. Take out and put into a colander to get rid of excess liquid
3. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius. Line a 25cm tart tin with pastry.
   
4. Place a piece of baking paper in the pastry and pour in some baking beads (dried beans or rice will do).
5. Lightly prick base of pastry with a fork in a few spots.
   
6. Bind bake pastry for 10 minutes.
7. While its baking, mix cream, eggs and milk together with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
8. Remove the paper and the beads and bake again for 3-5 minutes until pastry is just cooked but still very pale. (directly from the cookbook)
9. Take out the pastry.
10. Scatter the 1/2 of the bacon, zucchini and onion in the pastry.
11. Add the remaining in the egg mixutre and pour into the pastry.
12. Bake for 30 minutes or until the filling is set.
13. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes before serving.
    

The quiche was well received, though the pastry could have been done better and was quite hard to get off the pan. Luckily we had some skilled scapers who managed to cut up the quiche and serve each slice in one piece. I guess that's more motivation to try making some myself :)