Red Bean Challah Buns 紅豆哈拉小餐包

Red bean paste is one of my favorite Asian dessert flavors and ingredients. I love it with pudding, with cake, with mochi, with bread, with soup (yes, soup. We have sweet soup for dessert back home). I love with with almost anything really.

Challah dough is soft and for me it reminds me a little of the milk bread dough we have at home. Back home, red bean bun is very common and popular. So I thought, why not use the challah dough to make some red bean buns? The result was crazy good. It can also be made into regular challah- just braid it instead of roll it into round before final proofing!

Red Bean Challah Buns 紅豆哈拉餐包

Ingredients 

• Yeast 10g

• Water 80g at 110-115F

• Sugar 12g + 40g

• Egg 1 large

• Yolk 2, , plus another one for egg wash

• Honey 24g

• Bread Flour 290-330g

• Salt 3g

• Red bean paste 300g

Steps

1. Put the yeast in the water with the 12g of sugar in the mixing bowl, wait for several minutes until the mixture is foamy and activated.

2. Add in the rest of the sugar (40g), honey, whole egg and the yolks, mix a little. 

3. Mix the salt and 290g of flour together and slowly add it into the bowl of the wet ingredients. Add in more flour if needed. Do not over flour. Knead until smooth and elastic.

4. Transfer to an oiled bowl, cover and rest until it’s doubled in volume (about 2-3 hours)

5. Punch down the dough, cover, and rest for another 30 minutes

6. Divide the dough into 10 portions, shape into round, cover and rest for ten minutes 

7. Roll the dough out into ½” thick flat discs and place the red bean paste (30g each, 1 TBS) in the center, close the dough and shape them into rounds. Rest them with the seam side down. Cover and do a final proofing until when you press down the dough it slowly rises back up halfway. About 60-90 minutes, depending on the weather and temperature.

8. Preheat the oven to 375F. Whisk the remaining one yolk to make the egg wash.

9. Once proofed, brush on the egg wash, sprinkle some sesame seeds on top. Place the baking sheet in the oven and immediately lower the temperature to 350F. Bake for 18-23 minutes. Cool on a rack.