These buns are incredible. Soft, fluffy, slightly sweet and are a perfect accompaniment to a meal or a snack. They are essentially Hokkaido style milk bread with some added sweetness from the honey in this recipe. These buns originated from the Hokkaido region, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands. Hokkaido style buns are extremely soft, slightly chewy, milky and have a cloud like quality. These buns are made with Tangzhong which is gelatinous mixture of flour, water and/or milk. Tagzhong is use to make the bread softer and stay fresher longer. These buns are perfect brushed with garlic butter and served with dinner or can be eating as a dessert with delicious jam or another sweet spread like a chocolate hazelnut spread. Try this recipe out today because you will not regret it.
Milk and Honey Buns (Hokkaido Milk Bread)
Ingredients
Tangzhong
- 2 tablespoons 20 grams bread flour
- 2 tablespoons 27 grams water
- 4 tablespoons 60 grams whole milk
Bread Dough
- 2 1/2 cup 350 grams bread flour
- 1 tablespoons 9 grams active dry Yeast
- 3/4 cup 158 grams whole milk
- 1 teaspoon 5 grams salt
- 2 tablespoons 25 grams granulated Sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons of honey
- 2 tablespoon of milk powder
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter softened
- 1 egg
Egg Wash
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons of whole milk
Instructions
- Make Tangzhong: Add the Tangzhong ingredients into a small saucepan and mix over Medium heat, stirring constantly until a thick, sticky paste has formed. Remove form heat, cover with plastic wrap and allow to cool to room temp.
- In a small bowl, combine slightly warm milk about 90-94 degrees, and add your yeast. Wait 10 minutes till yeast becomes foamy.
- Combine flour, salt, milk powder, and sugar into the bowl, add your yeast mixture, Tangzhong, honey and eggs, mix cover and set aside to let flour hydrate.
- Transfer to a stand mixer with a dough hook and mix on medium-low rill dough forms.
- Add your softened butter a tablespoon at a time until it is incorporated.
- Mix for at least 7 minutes on medium. If you are having any trouble with butter incorporating into your dough, add flour a tablespoon at a time, mixing for 1 minute before adding more. Do not add too much extra flour, if you have measured out your ingredients, there should be no need to add more flour.
- After about 10 minutes total of kneading, dump dough on onto your clean work surface, you should not need to flour it and use your hands for round the dough into a nice ball. Keep your hand in contact with your surface.
- Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, and covered with a damp dish cloth and wait for about 2 hours until dough has doubled in size.
- Punch dough down and split into 9 balls about 75-85 grams each.
- Use the same technique you did before when shaping the big dough to round your 9 pieces. (Keep dough on your surface and use your hands to round out the dough until till it is smooth on top)
- Grease a round pan 9 inch pan or a square pan and arrange your balls baking pan
- Cover with a damp dish cloth again and allow to rise to 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours until about doubled in sized and filled out the pan .
- Preheat oven before making to 350 degrees and make your egg wash by whisking your egg and milk together.
- Brush rolls with egg wash and bake rolls for about 30 minutes, peek through oven door after 25 minutes. You sent your buns golden brown on top and puffed.
- Remove from oven. They may deflate ever so slightly when they are out of oven and that is okay. Brush with butter if you like and serve warm or at room temp, sweet with jam or other sweet spread or savoury with garlic butter or other spreads.
