Mk2 Pineapple

Way back in 2010, I tried making pineapple buns. For those of you who aren't familar with pineapple buns, it's a soft, sweet bread from Hong Kong with a distinctive crunchy crust. It was also officially declared a part of the cultural heritage by the Hong Kong government in 2014. Not that I care about that at all - I just like the taste of the things! Well, my first attempt was a partial success. My Hong Konger (yes, as weird as it sounds, I am led to believe that that is the correct term) friend, Pok, said that the topping tasted completely authentic, but we both agreed that the bread was far too firm and not nearly soft enough. I think a second attempt is well overdue now, so I'm keeping the recipe for the topping, but throwing the bread recipe out of the window. In its place, I'm adapting one from an old Chinese cookbook that I happen to have on the shelf - "Chopsticks Recipes More Dim Sum" by Cecilia J. Au-Yang.

Pineapple Buns Mk 2

Ingredients

For the bread yeast paste

• 1 Sachet dried yeast
• 1/2 tsp Sugar
• 60ml Warm water
• 3 tbsp Strong bread flour

For the bread dough

• 280g Strong bread flour
• 60g Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1 tbsp Condensed milk
• 80ml Warm water
• 50g Melted butter

For the topping

• 60g Caster sugar
• 60g Butter
• 100g Plain flour
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tbsp Condensed milk
• 1 Egg yolk
• Few drops vanilla extract
• 1 Whole egg

Method

1. Mix the ingredients for the yeast paste together into a paste and leave to prove for ~half an hour.
2. Form a dough from the yeast paste and all of the bread dough ingredients except the melted butter and knead until smooth.
3. Knead in the melted butter and cover and leave to rise for ~1 1/2 hours.
4. Cream the butter with the sugar and then beat in the rest of the rest of the ingredients for the topping except the whole egg.
5. Refridgerate the topping for an hour.
6. Knead once the bread dough again, divide into small bun-sized portions, shape and leave to prove for ~1 1/2 hours on a lined baking tray.
7. Divide the topping into even portions. Roll each portion out into a disc and cover each bun with one.
8. Beat the egg and brush over the buns.
9. Bake at 190C for ~15 minutes until the top is light golden.

Here they are before the prove. Pretty, no? 

But here they are again after the prove. As you can see, they've not risen at all really - clearly, it's not fermented properly. I have no idea what I've done wrong though - it's possible that the yeast was actually just too old and no longer alive, but I'm not 100% certain. Oh well, it's not going to stop me from baking it anyway!

And now with the topping added. I only actually used half of the topping in the end - I think the quantities of topping vs dough are pretty badly mismatched.

And here they are, ready for the oven.

Disaster! I was overly heavy handed with the egg wash, and you can see that the topping hasn't come out right. Plus, the top was soft, not crunchy.

The least-bad one of them...

So, it all seemed to go wrong at the end. But how did it taste anyway? Well, obviously, as the rise didn't work properly, it was very dense. I mean really, really dense. But also lovely and soft - so actually quite pleasant actually. The topping never went crunchy though, so a bit of a failure on that front. The flavour was nice though - the sweetness was about right in my opinion. All in all, it was definitely mostly a failure, but a tasty one nonetheless. I'll have to give them another go again soon!