We usually shape our bread dough into balls to be baked in a round or square pan. However, our dough can be beautifully shaped so that the resulting buns are more pleasing to the eyes and mouths. One of the designs that we can shape our buns into is the bow tie shape.
Ingredients:
- 250 ml warm milk
- 50 g sugar, white or brown
- 3 g instant yeast
- 1 egg, grade A
- 400 g bread flour plus some for dusting
- 5 g salt
- 75 g butter
Method:
- Add warm milk, sugar and yeast to the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir and wait for 10 - 15 minutes for the yeast to be activated.
- Once bubbles have formed showing that the yeast has been activated add egg to the bowl.
- Add bread flour and salt.
- Start kneading the ingredients till a dough ball is formed.
- Add butter to the dough ball and continue kneading till the butter is incorporated into the dough.
- Continue kneading till window pane is achieved.
- Oil a bowl and transfer the dough to it. Cover the bowl with a cling wrap and let the dough proof till double in size.
- Transfer the dough to a lightly floured counter top.
- Divide the dough into the number of buns that you would like to have. (Weight of dough divide by the number of intended number of buns will give you the weight of each smaller dough.)
- Roll each small piece of dough into a dough ball.
- Cover the dough balls and let them rest for 10 - 15 minutes.
- Take a dough ball and roll them into flat round dough.
- Refer to the pictures above.
- Using your bench knife, make a slit at the top of the round dough, two slits at the bottom and two slits on each side of the dough.
- On one side of the dough, bring the 2 pieces of dough under the middle dough. Repeat this on the other side.
- Then, bring the slim dough over the centre.
- Place your bow tie dough on your baking pan which has been greased and lined with parchment paper.
- Let the bow tie dough proof for a second time till they have doubled in size.
- Sprinkle bread flour over the proofed dough using a sieve.
- Bake them in a pre-heated oven at 175 deg C for 20 - 25 minutes.
- Once done, transfer the buns to a metal rack for them to cool down completely.