Milk Buns!

I have been on diet. I have been eating minimally. No more meat. No more oil, sugar or salt. Most importantly, no more bread!

What's life without bread?!?! Or maybe I am over exaggerating, but going too long with bread can drive a person crazy. It has certainly drove me crazy. I kept looking at bread pictures online and started drooling. I couldn't help but to start searching for a recipe for bread! Then I remember my favorite toast in Taiwanese cafe. The milk toast (奶酥土司). I love the milk topping on their toasts. So, I decided to make a bun with the milk filling. I found a recipe for buns on allrecipes.com and an idea of how to make the milk filling somewhere on the Internet.

I got the bun recipe here:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Tasty-Buns/Detail.aspx

I adjusted the serving number. The following makes 10 little buns that are a little smaller than my fist.

Here is the recipe for the bun:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon of dry active yeast
1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white sugar 

1/2 teaspoon salt

Ingredient for the milk filling:

2 egg yolk

3 tablespoon of sugar

4 table spoon of milk powder

1. Stir together 1 cups flour and the yeast. In a separate bowl, heat milk, water, oil, sugar and salt to lukewarm in microwave. Add all at once to the flour mixture, and beat until smooth, about 3 minutes.
2. Mix in enough flour to make a soft dough, about 1 cups. Mix well. Dust a flat surface with flour, turn dough out onto floured surface, and let rest under bowl for about 2 hours
3. Mix the ingredient for the filling. Store in the fridge to stiffen it.
4. Shape dough into 10 slightly flat balls, flatten it and then add a bit of the filling to it.  If you want more filling, just make more of it. Shape it into a ball and place on greased baking sheet to rise until doubled in size.
5. Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

I got home from work and immediately started baking. I am no cook. I have never baked bread before. I was so afraid that the bread would turn into a disaster. Fortunately, out of the 10 buns, only 3 totally ruptured with the filling inside out. Nonetheless, they all tasted delicious! They are all so soft and chewy! I love them. They are a bit sweet from the milk filling. Just the right sweetness I like. I ate 3 of them. I felt so guilty afterward...as I am on diet.

I love this bun recipe. It's so easy! I am sure anyone can succeed with it!

Chi.