I love making my own soy milk and have always felt bad about throwing out the okara (soy bean pulp). I've tried using them as fertiliser for my plants and to make cakes with but that didn't work out so well. As fertiliser it attracted bugs and in cakes and muffins that I made with them tend to turn out rather dense. However, in bread making it is a miracle ingredient!
For these buns, I used my bread machine to do all the kneading and first proofing for me, which I have been doing a lot lately, which is great on busy work days. You can certainly make this in the stand mixer fitted with a dough hook as well.
I'm really stoked about how amazing and pretty these buns turned out. They taste like a fluffy brioche bun. So delicious! I'm never throwing out okara ever again! Fresh okara is supposed to be used within 24 hours but can be frozen up to 6 months.
Ingredients: (Makes 9 rolls)
315 g bread flour
125 ml unsweetened soy milk, lukewarm
125 g fresh okara
25 g sugar
1-1/2 tsp yeast
1 egg
50 g butter
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp pearl sugar
Egg wash - 1 egg yolk + 1 Tbsp soy milk
Warm up soy milk in a microwavable bowl or jug for 30 secs. Add sugar and yeast. Set aside for 10 mins till yeast has been activated. Beat in egg.
In pan of bread machine, add flour, okara, salt and butter.
Pour in the soy milk mixture and run the dough mode of your bread machine.
After the first dough proofing process has been completed and the dough has doubled in size, remove dough from bread pan to a lightly floured work surface.
Divide dough into 9 equal pieces, about 74 g each. Roll into balls, cover and let rest for 15 mins.
Flatten each ball slightly and divide into half and roll into balls. Flatten each ball and with a rolling pin, stretching to 11 cm in diameter then cut in half. Repeat with the other ball. You will have 4 semi-circles.
Place each semi circle on top of the other leaving about 2 cm spacing from the right. Straight side facing down.
From the right side, roll the dough towards the left to form a flower.
Place on a lined 23cm (9 inch) square pan. Repeat till all the buns have been formed. Cover and rest for 30 mins.
Preheat oven to 180C.
Brush buns with egg wash, sprinkle with pearl sugar and bake for 20-23 mins.
Remove from oven and drop baking pan on counter top to prevent the buns from shrinking.
Dust with powdered sugar.
Happiness is freshly baked bread.
I have to tell you what I did with your recipe. I decided to use it as the basis for an orange and cinnamon sweet roll. I began as I always do with a poolish of 100 grams of all purpose flour, 110 grams of water, and two pinches of yeast. I use this poolish for all breads and then I add only 1/2 tsp of yeast when making the dough. Anyway, here's what I did. I used the 315 grams of all purpose flour and maybe another 1.5 tbsp when the bread machine was doing the kneading. Theoretically I needed another 15 grams of liquid but the okara was quite wet and I was adding orange juice concentrate s…