A First Attempt at Buns

I had a TDY to Guam when I was 19 or 20 years old. While there, a Japanese guy sold me a bun with a filling unlike anything I'd ever tasted. Thanks to the language barrier, I never knew what it was called - I just pointed at them and forked over the cash. I went back as often as I could, but sometimes they were sold out, and once I flew back to the US, that was it for me.

Years later, I came across that filling again in some Chinese buffet mochi. After that reminder, I was able to figure out the filling - anko, the sweet red bean paste. The buns stuffed with this magical crimson goop are called anpan, and that's what I've made here.

The dough for anpan is tough stuff - Mostly bread flour with a little cake flour, beaten furiously to a glutinous heap. It took about 25 minutes to come together. After the butter went in, at first it smeared all over my mixer's bowl, but 15 minutes later, it had smoothed out a lot. The dough still had a buttery feel to it, but there was no reside on the sides of the bowl.

It looked even smoother after rising for a bit more than an hour. After rising, I poked it, and it didn't cave back in. Then it's lightly worked and rolled into a ball.

Chopping a "plus sign" and an "X" on top of the dough ball gives 8 wedges, which can be balled up to make our buns. The individual buns rest as lil' unstuffed globs for 15 minutes.

Three of these buns are already stuffed. The last one hasn't been pinched closed yet.

After pinching shut, these prove again for 30 minutes. Right before going into the oven, they get an egg wash.

Here they are after baking. 13.5 minutes @ 400F in my oven (Just averaged "12 to 15 minutes" because I had no idea how golden-brown was the right amount)

Monch-shot

Bun Notes

I think mine could have done with more filling.

My instructions said to flatten into a tapered disk, which I interpreted as a "UFO shape", a bulge with thin sides. This is still pretty subjective, and I'll be making mine a lot closer to "thin flat disk" next time: if the proportions aren't correct, you'll have a big clod of bun on one side of your filling, and a thin, overly crisp side for the bottom.

5 of the 8 buns we made leaked! Pinch, pinch, pinch. I will be pinching like the dickens next time.

I'll make more soon because the bag of Anko I snipped open can probably make 24 to 36 more buns, and it's now in my fridge, ticking towards spoilage.

This recipe came from Cook Anime by Diana Ault.