Red Bean and Coconut Bread

I love those Chinese bakery buns, especially the ones filled with red bean paste. I love going to 99 Ranch and getting them (or Chinatown,) but recently, they haven't been too great... plus at like 89 cents a bun.. I really can't afford to eat too many.. too often. The bread, now, is usually dry, and well, they really do skimp the oh so yummy filling. I bought a can of red bean paste from 99 ranch a few months ago, hoping to make this. My mom used a bit of the red bean to fill her pastry, which was a flaky mung bean bun.. er well.. now flaky red bean bun, so I had half a can left. The canned red beans are sweeter than I would like, but it does make this recipe, almost effortless, if you use your bread machine. I will try to make the red bean paste myself next time, maybe cutting back from the sugar a bit.

I did two styles. I did a spiral loaf, and a faux-braided one. The braided one came out the best. I forgot to butter the pan, and the spiral bread stuck to the pan :(. Sadness. It was a mini disaster, but tasted just like the ones at the Asian bakeries. I know what to do next time, but I think I will just stick to the round bun shape, just for portability, and also freezability.. haha ok, well that's not really a word.

Anyway. I've been searching high and low for the perfect bun recipe. I was going to try a Brioche dough, but found that to be too much effort. I thought, why not just use a basic white bread recipe with a bit more sugar? Sure. That worked. It tasted like white bread, with red bean paste.. nothing bad with that, but still not the real deal. My parents both loved the breads. I think I will experiment more with it, as well as the filling. The bread part is tasty, soft, fluffy, and moist. I think it will go great with some BBQ pork filling, as well as the custard ones. I also want to try a pineapple bun recipe, because that was one of my favorite ones at the bakeries... a pineapple bun (bo lo bao) with red bean filling.. ahh the best of both worlds : )!

So this braided loaf, is something I've done in the past, maybe 6-7 years ago. I used to make the bread part, the old fashion way, kneading, and pulling...I filled a bread like this with a raisin-walnut filling. It was delicious, time consuming, but dried out pretty quickly. I forgot to take pictures of how to do it, but it's basically roll out your dough into a rectangle, fill the middle third with filling, and cut angled strips along the sides, on both sides making sure they're a mirror image of one another. Alternate placing strip from right to left, and fold in the ends. I'm bad at explaining these things... but I'm sure there's a tutorial on line somewhere. I think it's a beautiful way to show bread, that is actually really easy!.



Red Bean and Coconut Bread

Makes 3 braided loaves or one spiral loaf and one braided loaf

1 cup warm water
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
2-1/4 tsp dry yeast
1/4 cup oil
3 cups bread flour

+ 1/2 - 1 can red bean paste
1/3 cup shredded coconut
1 egg for egg wash
Sesame seeds for sprinkling on top of egg wash

1. Combine all ingredients in a bread machine on dough setting (everything but the flour on the bottom, adding the flour last.) Set it.
2. After 10 minutes, restart the machine, so it starts on the dough setting again. (For more softer/tender dough!)
3. After 1.5 hours, take out the dough. Punch down, and let rest for 5 minutes.
4. Remove dough and place onto floured surface. Knead a bit to get it pliable. Fill and shape the dough. Let rise for 1 hour in a warm place. (Use an oven, preheat at 220 degrees for 3-4 minutes, and then turned off... make sure it's warm, not hot!.. then put your bread in.)
5. Brush with egg wash. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake in a pre-heated oven @ 350 degrees until golden brown. Mine took around 18 minutes.

**** if you use a pan, be sure to butter and flour it well!****

I always have a hard time photographing bread... I hate taking pictures in my kitchen.. it never turns out nice... : / I'm hoping for a kitchen with plenty of sunshine when I move! ... on the few days SF gets sunshine that is.... ahh I'm going to miss all of those sunny LA days... : (

Braided loaf - before the final rise After 1 hour of rising in a warm place.. ahh so fluffy! The end piece is always a mess...there's actually no filling in that part.. just a lot of excess dough!It rose a lot!... The dough was so soft and squishy... :)

haha, so here is the inside of my spiral bread.. I basically had to scrap it out of my bread pan... because I forgot the butter : (. Lesson well learned. My dad said it was still very good... maybe he was just saying that to make me feel better because I was pretty sad to see my bread in pieces, especially after all that time I spent waiting to eat it. I think the beans are a bit too heavy, or I added too much, or rolled it too many times which made the inside of the bread collapse. I will try less next time, and won't put it into a pan. I love the way the braided loaf turned out, and the beautiful color it got from the egg wash.. I rarely get a nice even browning of my foods in that oven!