Friday, February 18, 2011

Pandan Bread

Posted by Kirbie / 6 comments » / Bread, Recipes

After making my ham and cheese bread, I had enough tangzhong mixture left to make another loaf, so I decided to try making pandan bread.

Pandan is a common flavor used in Filipino, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Thai cuisine. You can make a pandan extract or paste with fresh pandan leaves, but I’ve never done this. Instead I’ve always used a pandan paste, which can be found at the grocery store.

I’ve always found it hard to describe the taste of pandan, but I really love it. And I like the pretty green (though there is food coloring added to the pandan paste to make it look like the colors of pandan leaves).

The bread came out nice and fluffy. I was a little worried after my disaster trying to create a purple sweet potato bread. The pandan taste ended up being pretty mild though even though I thought I used a tad too much extract.
I am submitting this recipe to Yeastspotting.


Pandan bread (recipe base adapted from two of Christine’s recipes here and here,which she adapted from the 65 degrees book)

Ingredients:

2½ cups bread flour
3tbsp + 2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg
½ cup milk
120g tangzhong (click here for making tangzhong)
2 tsp instant yeast
3 tbsp butter (cut into small pieces, softened at room temperature)

2 tsp pandan paste

Directions
1. Combine the flour, salt, sugar and instant yeast in a bowl of a stand mixer. Make a well in the center. Add in all wet ingredients: milk, egg and tangzhong and pandan paste. Fit the dough hook attachment on your stand mixer and begin mixing on medium speed and knead until your dough comes together and then add in the butter and continue kneading.  Keep kneading until the dough is smooth, not too sticky on the surface and elastic. I kneaded the dough for about 18-20 minutes. Each mixer may vary.

When the dough is ready, you should be able to take a chunk of dough and stretch it to a very thin membrane before it breaks. When it does break, the break should be form a circle. (These are old photos I took from another bread to give you an idea of what it should look like.)


2. Knead the dough into a ball shape. Take a large bowl and grease with oil.  Place dough into  greased bowl and cover with a wet towel. Let it proof until it’s doubled in size, about 40 minutes.
3. Transfer to a clean surface. Divide the dough into four equal portions. Knead into balls.  Cover with cling wrap, let rest for 15 minutes.
4. Roll out each portion of the dough with a rolling pin into an oval shape.  Take one end of the dough and fold to meet the middle of the oval. Take the other end and fold to meet on top. (Again, these are not photos from the pandan bread, but it is the same idea.)

5. Flip dough over with the folds facing down,and flatten dough with rolling pin.
6. Flip dough over so the folds face up. Now roll the dough up. Place each of the rolls into the bread pan and put a piece of plastic wrap over the rolls. Let them rise until double the size, approximately another 40 minutes.
7. As an option, beat an egg and brush egg mixture on top to create shiny eggwash finish.
8. Bake at 330 degrees F for approximately 30 minutes.

Posted by Kirbie on February 18, 2011
6 Comments »
tags: pandan bread, tangzhong
 

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6 Responses to “Pandan Bread”

  1. 1

    cooking.eating.carousing. — January 4, 2012 @ 3:31 pm

    I’ve been looking for an easy bread recipe for my leftover pandan leaves. This sound perfect. Thank you.

    • Kirbie replied: — January 5th, 2012 @ 10:58 am

      I’ve had such a hard time finding pandan leaves! I always end up using extract, though the real thing is so much better.

  2. 2

    Carolyn — January 9, 2013 @ 3:55 pm

    How do I make pandan paste from pandan leave?

    • Kirbie replied: — January 9th, 2013 @ 4:59 pm

      I’ve never made it fresh from pandan leaves as they are not readily available near me. Sorry

  3. 3

    Carolyn — January 10, 2013 @ 7:19 pm

    I just made this today with home made pandan leave paste but the bread doesn’t turn out green in colour. Anyway, the texture was very soft though..will definitely make this again…

    • Kirbie replied: — January 11th, 2013 @ 10:07 am

      The pandan paste I use has green good coloring in it. I think if you use fresh pandan leaves, you need to add a little green food coloring to get it to be green. Glad it tastes good though!

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