I have got some leftover black sesame powder that I really want to finish off but I don’t like drinking them, so I used them to bake a loaf of bread!
Black Sesame Loaf 黑芝麻吐司
(Recipe adapted from 爱厨房的幸福之味)
300g bread flour
50g black sesame powder
50g caster sugar
3g sea salt
3g instant yeast
25g oil/softened butter
200mL liquid (one egg, top it up with water or milk or a mixture of both)
- Sieve all the dry ingredients (except salt and yeast), especially the black sesame powder as they tend to clump together.
- Put a tablespoon of flour into the loaf pan, follow by the salt. Then put the rest of dry ingredients. On the top of the dry ingredients, scoop out some flour to make a hollow for the yeast, then cover the hollow with the scooped-out flour. Ignore this point if you prefer to use the yeast compartment.
- Put the wet ingredients in and start the machine. I used baking option 6: ‘Rice Bread’ on light crust setting, because it is very similar to ‘Basic Bread’ but it claims to produce softer bread.**The bread machine was set to operate in a cool (~26-27ºC) environment. Anything beyond 30ºC does the bread no good!
*
The dough was not sticky at all. It looked very light and smooth, and it held up very well.
I am not too sure but it seemed there was a second proofing stage on this programme. Below is the dough a while after it was kneaded.
After two hours or so, the dough looked like this:
The shape was entirely different. I suppose at some point, the dough was knocked out and entered second proofing.
Anyway, baking started at the last 40 minutes and I took the bread out 3 minutes earlier. I am glad to say the bread was perfect!!! 😀 😀
This is the first time I got a loaf that grew taller than the bread tin! Beautiful! The height was around 18cm! 😀
However, as usual, there were two sides to the bread:
The crust was harder on the rocky side, but that was no big deal.
The bread itself was really light and soft – totally comparable to tang zhong bread, no pressure! 😛
The bread was a little sweet but not overly sweet. If you have a sweet tooth this would suit you, but personally I would reduce the sugar by 5g next time. The black sesame powder gave the bread a very pleasant nutty fragrant as well! 😛
Really happy to have found such a perfect recipe for the bread machine! 😉
