Soft Buns...;)

Oh my goodness. I have finally made GOOD bread. :D
I love bread that has a nice soft "crust", as opposed to a hard...crusty...one...haha.
After hearing about the Hokkaido milk loaf (I know, I'm a bit late on this one). I decided to give it a try. Buuuuut I was wary, so I ended up mixing/tweaking recipes. The one I used is mostly from The Little Teochew.

Anyhoo, it's like, 4 in the morning, so here are pictures and the recipe! :D


By no means is this actually a proper way to make bread, hehe. I took directions and ran with them because I'm lazy ;)






Soft Buns:
1 cup of heavy cream
1/2 cup of milk
1/4 cup of sugar
uh. couple of squirts of honey? (haha)
4ish cups of flour (bread flour is gooooood)
2 1/4 tsps instant yeast (that's generally a whole packet)
1 tsp of salt
1 egg

At this point, I like to preheat the oven to 350, just to make the whole kitchen (and the stovetop) warm, which makes the dough rise better :D
Warm up the cream and milk. While that's happening, add the sugar, yeast, and honey to a bowl.
Add the warm milk to the bowl and stir it all up. Add two cups of flour and the egg, mix it until it's smooth, and let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes.
Add another cup of flour, mix it up and dump it out onto a flour surface. Knead the dough, incorporating as much of the last cup of flour as you need. The dough should be soft, but not sticky.
Let it rise in a greased bowl for an hour, or until doubled.
Divide up the dough. (I am not a stickler for exactness. Just make them somewhat smaller than you want the final size to be) Form them into balls. As I am epic fail at explaining how I do it ("you just kinda...roll it around with two hands"), here's a webpage that sort of does it the way I do it. Trust me, you'll figure it out (just stop before he rolls the balls out...we don't want that!)
After you've formed them, set them on your sheet, and let them rise for another hour/doubled in size. Then bake them for about 15 minutes, or until a pretty light brown color.
I would not do an egg wash on these, just 'cause that makes the crust a little harder.

Serve with happiness and/or sunshine. (read: butter and/or jam)

;D

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