Friday, August 19, 2016

Anpan あんパン (Plain flour)

I've been wanting to make this ever since I bought つぶあん anko from the store. However, most of the recipes involved bread and cake flour (e.g. my favourite JOC) and I don't have either. So I looked for a recipe using plain flour and found this.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5927/anpan

The food blogger said that by removing the egg from the recipe, it more closely simulated the soft texture of the original anpan which uses cake and bread flour.

Alternative recipe that uses water and less milk but makes a smaller batch http://mamaloli.com/recipes/other/anpan/

However, I noticed that most of the recipes, the anpan flattened out upon proving and baking. Not a pretty look. And then I came across this recipe which gave tips on hope to keep the anpan dome-shaped.

http://www.forktobelly.com/2016/05/25/anpan-kitty/
(this recipe is based on JOC but technique has been altered. It also has an alternate sweet potato filling, and shapes each anpan as a kitty)

The trick is that when putting in the filling, flatten out the edges but to keep the centre thicker. Much like when wrapping gyoza, no?

Recipe feedback: I tried the recipe by Fresh Loaf because it uses normal flour but this recipe doesn't work. The omission of bread flour made everything almost soupy. Even after adding an egg and putting in another 1/2 cup of flour, it barely stuck together, but it was very very sticky and very very hard to work with, even giving it 5 minutes rest time in between.

Anpan with cheese brioche on the top right since I ran out of anko (480g can, used 2 level tbsp per bun). Baked at 180 deg C fan-forced for 20 mins using egg yolk with splash of milk as glaze. The buns came out very fluffy but very very dense and heavy for some reason. Not very gluten free, haha!

Recipe to try next time: http://thedomesticgoddesswannabe.com/2014/12/adzuki-bean-bread-buns-豆沙面包-red-bean-bread-buns/

Updated: Used recipe with bread and cake flours. And also mixed in a food processor. Much better result. http://simmetra.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/anpan-mixed-flours.html

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