Pandan Bread 班兰香草面包

Since I resumed my baking hobby, I gave myself a target to explore at least one new baking recipe a week. Below is another bread recipe I adapted from a new local bread making cook book I bought recently.

This recipe used one of the local plants, Pandan to enhance the bread flavour. Pandan a.k.a. Screwpine, is a common tropical plant widely used in Southeast Asian cooking. The natural green coloring extracted from Pandan leaves and the characteristic of its aroma is especially useful for enhancing the color and flavour in cooking especially in dessert making.  Other than as a flavour, the pandan leaves can be used to wrap savory dishes and weaved into handicrafts. Visit my previous dessert recipe Kuih Talam and Kaya posts, which featured the use of pandan leaves as one of the ingredients.

While in New Zealand, the cold weather wasn’t conducive for growing Pandan plant and I could only go for frozen pandan leaves or Pandan essence/paste to get its flavor in cooking. Now in Malaysia, I can easily find this plant grown in my neighbourhood garden.  They grow so easily and wildly in this country. Whenever I wish to use a piece or two, I just need to ask from my neighbour and they would generously share with me. 

For this Pandan bread recipe, I again hand kneaded the bread dough. If you are a follower of my blog, you would know I hand kneaded all my bread dough. This time, I reckon it would be much more effective to show a video clip of my hand kneading process.

I must admit hand kneading is quite a tiring process. In fact, I’ve been considering getting a good stand mixer but held back by the low frequency of my usage as a branded mixer such as Kitchen Aids can be really expensive in Malaysia. On the other hand a cheaper mixer is not powerful enough for dough mixing. L

If you have any good mid budget range mixers to recommend (powerful enough for dough mixing), please drop me a line. Thanks.

Pandan  Bread Ingredient: (A) 350g High Protein Flour/bread flour 5g milk powder 2.5g bread improver (I omitted) (B) 50g caster sugar 1/2 tsp. salt 1 tsp. (6g) instant yeast 30g egg ( I use whole egg – 50g) 200ml water (I use milk and cut down to 150ml, since I use whole egg) 5-6 drops of Pandan paste   (cut fresh pandan leaves as many as you have into pieces add with little water and user blender or mortar to pound and filter to get paste, can store up to 2 weeks in fridge) (C) 30g butter 150g raisins -soak for 1 hour, drain (I omitted)   (D) Custard Filling – (method  here) 2 tablespoon custard powder 3/4 cup fresh milk 3 tablespoons sugar Method: 1)      Combine all B and add in A in a mixing bowl and mix and knead into dough. 2)      Once form smooth dough, add in Ingredient C butter and continue to knead the dough until dough develops into elastic form. 3)      Add in soaked raisins and mix well. ( I omitted this step) 4)      Cover dough with cling wrap and let them rise till double in volume, about 80mins. 5)      Test the dough by finger test, if impressions remain, dough is proofed. 6)      Remove dough and punch down to remove trapped air as your knead; let the dough rest for 15mins. 7)      Divide dough into 60g balls and place in a greased round baking tin 8)      Cover with cling wrap, let dough go thru 2nd proof for 60mins or until the dough double the size. 9)      Pipe custard filling in between bread, brush with egg wash. 10)   Bake at preheated oven at 180-190 degree C for about 20-25mins. 11)   Remove from oven and unmold immediately. 班兰香草面包   材料: A)     主面团： 高筋面粉350克， 奶粉5克 面包改良剂2。5克（我没放） B)      细砂糖40克， 盐1/2小匙， 干酵母6克 (1小匙)， 鸡蛋30克（我用全蛋 - 50G） 水/牛奶200ml水（我用牛奶和把水减到150毫升因我已用多蛋液） 5-6滴香草/班兰香精 （切新鲜的香兰叶成片，加少许水和搅拌器或石臼捣碎和过滤,可存储在冰箱2个星期） C)      牛油20克 葡萄干150克，浸泡1小时，沥干（我省略了，没放） D)     吉士浆 - （做法在此） 2汤匙吉士粉 3/4杯鲜牛奶 3汤匙糖 做法: 1）将所有的材料B，和A添加在搅拌碗里揉成面团。 2）一旦形成光滑的面团，加入C牛油，继续揉面团，直到面团发展成有弹性的。 3）加入浸泡过的葡萄干拌匀。 （我省略这一步，没放） 4）用保鲜膜盖面团，进行基本发酵直到两倍约80分钟。 5）用手指测试面团，如果手指印象仍然，面团已发酵好。 6）取出面团，压去被困的空气，让面团休息15分钟。 7）把面团分成60克滚圆，放在抹了油的圆形烤盘 8）盖上保鲜膜，进行最后发酵60分钟。 9）待发大，把蛋黄浆挤在面包之间，刷上蛋液。 10）预热烤箱在180-190摄氏度，烤盘放在烤箱中间，烤约20 - 25分钟。 11）从烤箱中取出，并立即脱模.