Chicken Curry Bread Buns

Being a heartlander, I used to grow up eating curry bread buns when I was living in Singapore. Most of bread buns sold in traditional-style bakeries located within the reach of most HDB (Housing Development Board) estates are usually baked with lots of South-Asian flavours and these chicken curry buns are as good as those we ate in Singapore. With sweet spicy flavours with pandan leaf trimmings, these chicken curry really reminds me of my younger days at home.

This recipe originates from the book, I Can Bake by Agnes Chang. Its basic bread dough is enriched with high buttery content and tastes really good with curry chicken filling. To avoid using bread improver, I have made my bread dough with an overnight sponge to enhance the texture of the bread.

Prior this bake, I remember reading Quinn's Baking Diary who had used this similar recipe before and mentioned that his buns are not spicy enough and so I doubled the amount of curry used and used barbequed chicken breast instead of the raw chicken meat.

For my son, I have made half of these buns to be the non-curry ones and glad that he was enjoying the non-curry buns too. Being typical Singaporean, my husband and I still prefer the curry ones. All thumbs up!
My family and I are going away again! We are going to USA for the next 2 weeks and will return on at late June 2013. See ya!

Our chicken curry bread buns

The theme ingredient for Little Thumbs Up (Jun 2013) is CURRY!

Making my bread dough with an overnight sponge

Cooking the curry paste

My husband barbequed these chicken breasts and I shredded them into pieces.

Mix the shredded chicken with curry and non-curry ingredients

Proving and baking

Munch!

Curry + Bread =  Flavoursome + Awesome!

All buns were gone, leaving the pandan trimmings behind... Thumbs up!

Here are the recipes from the book, I Can Bake by Agnes Chang
(with my modifications and notes in blue) 

Basic Sweet Bun Dough
 
A:
400g high protein flour, sifted
100g low protein flour, sifted
1 tsp bread improver, optional
(I didn't add this, instead I made an overnight sponge with this modification - please see *)
10g milk powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp instant yeast
100g castor sugar
(reduced to 50g)
1 egg
220 ml water

B:
75g butter / margarine

Put all ingredients A into a bowl or breadmaker and mix into a smooth dough.
Add B and continue to knead until gluten has developed and it can be stretched into a very thin layer.
Cover with a piece of damp cloth and leave to rise until it doubles in bulk (I did mine for 1 hr).
Punch down and knead again until smooth.
Divide into desired portions and shape into balls.
Cover with damp cloth and rest for 10-15 mins: before forming into different shapes.

*I try not to add bread improver in my bread baking as much as I can and believe the addition of overnight sponge will enhance and improve the texture of most soft fluffy breads and so this is what I did to my list of ingredient A:

Overnight sponge
100g high protein flour
70ml water
1/4 tsp yeast
Put all overnight sponge ingredients into a bowl and knead into a smooth dough. Leave the dough to rise until double in size. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge until it is ready to use on the next day.

My modified ingredient A:
Overnight sponge
300g high protein flour, sifted
100g low protein flour, sifted
10g milk powder
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp instant yeast
50g castor sugar
1 egg
150 ml water

Curry Chicken Filling

Makes about 18 buns (or 8 large buns)

2 tbsp oil

A: 2 tbsp curry powder, mixed with 3 tbsp water
1 big onion, chopped
(I used 1 red onion)
1 sprig curry leaves

B: 200g chicken meat, cut into small cubes
(replaced 4 medium sized shredded home-barbequed chicken breasts)
2 boiled potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
1 tsp chicken stock granules
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp water 
(divided ingredient B into half and add A into one of the halves and add 3 tbsp tomato sauce into the other half being without the curry flavours)

Glazing
1 egg or egg yolk plus 2 tbsp milk, lightly beaten with 1/8 tsp salt

Decoration
A few pieces of pandan leaf, cut into 1cm x 10cm length

For the filling, heat up oil, saute A until fragrant. Add B, stir well and cook until dry. Taste. Dish up and leave to cool. Put aside. I have divided ingredient B into half and add A into one of the halves (which means using all the curry seasoning in half amount of meat and potatoes - doubling the curry seasonings) and add 3 tbsp tomato sauce into the other half being without the curry flavours.

Divide dough into 50g pieces (or into 8 portions for larger size) and roll each piece into thin sheet. Wrap up 2 tbsp filling and shape into buns. Tie with pandan leaf. Arrange onto a baking tray.

Glaze with beaten egg and leave to rise until it doubles in bulk.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200°C for about 15 mins, until cooked or golden brown.

Note: Using the full amount of this recipe, I have baked 8 buns in total (4 with curry and 4 without curry), having 1 bun portion of tomato sauce filling and 1 1/2 bun portions of curry filling as leftover. All buns were baked at 180°C fan forced for 15 mins.

Happy Baking
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