Soft Asian Sweet Buns (甜面包)

Asians like our breads pillowy soft and fluffy.  These are seen in bake shops from North Asia Japan, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong, to South East Asia Singapore and Malaysia.  The western buns tend to be bigger, heartier and rougher in texture.

In our house, we prefer soft breads, freshly baked, please.

I have watched my dad make breads since the 1960s, when breads were rare in Singapore. He was taught how to make breads by the British when Singapore was still a colony. At one point of his pastry career, he worked in Cold Storage before the 1972 fire that wiped out the place that was a landmark in Orchard Road. My dad also lost his wedding ring when he took it off to knead bread and left it in his apron.

The most important thing about making bread is in the kneading of the bread, and the test that the gluten is well formed. Therefore, the window pane test is crucial.

If the bun is to be soft and pillowy, the trapping of the moisture is vital. I have spent quite a bit of time searching for this secret in many methods, and baked 65C bread tangzhong, Hong Kong’s zhongzhong, with and without starters, with and without roux etc etc. They all worked and they all have a common motive, which is to trap in as much moisture as possible at the right temperature or right environment.

So here is my own theory of how this method works.

In proofing the breads too many times, I feel that the dough will lose too much moisture to the surrounding air, especially if we stay in countries that are not so humid. I remember my bread teacher used to put a bowl of water in the proofing cupboard and generate steam to keep the dough moist as they proved. The result is soft soft buns.

Another thing he did was to spread oil on the dough during the first proof, and then spray water on the breads after shaping. All to stop the dough from drying out.

So these theories on proofing make a lot of sense to me. I then thought about the yeast.

I saw how the commercial yeast evolved over the last 40 years, from the time my dad used fresh yeast that he kept in the fridge to those quick activating ones we get in stores today. In fact, it is hard to find fresh yeast these days. So I experimented a few times to see if these yeast work uniformly. Most do.

And this is how I derived this method of making Asian buns. You just need to proof these buns enough for them to continue activating the yeast in the oven. They will be soft even after a day (if you keep them in air-tight containers), and can be kept for up to 3 days.

Enjoy!