Simple Buttery Water Roux Dough Loaf

I have been lazy with my bread making - into the routine, nothing new, alternative sourdough and white loaves for the children.

Last week, I thought, I might try the water roux dough again.  It's an interesting bread, and I haven't used that method for hmm... almost 4 months?  Can't remember.  Just a simple water roux dough loaf, and turned out pretty well, children loved it.

Water Roux - The Day Earlier
20g flour
100ml water

Mix flour with water in a clean pot, bring it to simmer and stir quickly to make a smooth silky roux paste, cool and store in a air tight container in fridge.

Soft Buttery White Loaf
350g strong bread flour
160ml whole milk (a lot of water roux bread recipes call for milk powder and water, I'm not quite sure why, but since I'm not a huge fan of processed products, I usually use fresh products whenever I can, unless there's a scientific reason not to)
1 large egg
50g butter
7g dry instant yeast
Water roux made the day before
pinch of salt
1 tbsp sugar

Warm up the milk and add yeast to it, set aside and let it froth up - for about 15 minutes
Add sugar and flour to the yeast mixture, and salt, make sure salt is away from the yeast.
Add water roux to the rough doux and the egg, start kneading, and slowly knead in all the butter, bit by bit.
I normally knead the dough for a couple of minutes and leave it in the bowl, cover by damp cloth for 10-15 minutes and go back and knead again, repeat till the dough is elastic, and then leave the dough in an oiled container, coverred in a warm spot to proof.

The bread only takes about 1-2 hours to proof for the first time, and then it's time to shape the dough into a greased loaf tin for the second proofing, around 1 hour and into a preheated 190C oven to bake for 30 minutes.

Water Roux Breads, Red Bean Buns and Cheesy Mite Twist

I've decided to make more water roux buns.  Hmm, guess I just want to experiment a little more.

For the Roux:

250ml Water
50g plain flour

Make the roux on stove top and then cool in fridge.

Because I'm making quite a bit of bread, so this is the dough for the lot:
600g plain strong flour
250g milk
2 tbsp instant dry yeast
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
2 large 59g eggs
75g butter

and I'm using 3/5 of the roux - leaving the rest for a loaf for the lunch box.

The dough's a bit wet and I knead in the butter last - well, I did use the bench top mixer.

It proofed really well.

I used 4/5 of the dough to make a rectangle and spread on vegemite and some shredded tasty cheese.

Rolled it up and made it into a twist.

The rest of the dough, was devided and I used it to make around 14 red bean buns.

Brush on egg wash and baked in 190C oven for 15-18 minutes....

Custard Pineapple Buns - More Water Roux Bread - Tangzhong

I tried the tangzhong method again, the water roux.
I can't say I followed the recipe exactly, but pretty much similar:

Water roux:
20g plain flour
100g water

Dough:
350g bread flour
160g milk
5g dry instant yeast
30g sugar
5g salt
35g butter.

I had some custard filling and sugar crust already made from last batch of pineapple buns (they don't have pineapples in them but the crust was scored to look like pineapple skins?)

I made the water roux as per instruction, made the dough and proof the dough as normally it would happen for us and then shaped the buns with fillings and covered with the crust:

They proof alright,

I didn't watch the oven and I must admit I was 3 minutes too late...

But nothing too exciting about the result... so I'm not really sure water roux is the way to go or not for the next batch of bread, whatever it is.

My First Water Roux Loaf - Tangzhong

I must say I'm never a white bread fan myself, I like hmm.... rustic.  Hard crusts, dense, seeds, rye, spelt, etc etc, and I fell in love with the sourdough starter from day one.


However, the family loves white breads and sweet breads and after reading about Water Roux breads, from Happy Home Baking and Christine's recipes, I decided to give it ago.  After all, mum and dad always liked Bread top style breads.


I decided to start with something simple... and I end up using another blogger's recipe, by Sea Dragon of Corner Cafe.


I used almost exact the same recipe... Although I found it a bit hard to knead and added 10ml more water.  Ah, some old habbits die hard...  so I did activate the dry yeast with warm water first, and rub the butter into the flour... Guess I wasn't reading properly... hehe...


I must say that I can't get the right room temperature, I did it yesterday and it was like 13C max during the day in Melbourne, wet yes, but very cold.  Even colder during night time when I was making the bread.  So unfortunately I wasn't able to follow the second part of the recipe with temperature instructions.

Well, the first proofing was actually going alright. I usually don't prefer to use the bench top mixer (I do like it with cakes etc, especially macarons) but I don't like it with bread kneading, it will only do the initial job...  and I've sold my bread maker on EBay a while back because I never used it.  I have found the best result was from the one of the Master Class on Master Chef with breads, that you knead bread and rest and do it slowly....  and I found the dough started to proof already during that period...  So.. all positive?


But then I got impatient... The best breads I made, especially the croissants etc, are almost all cold proofed, takes longer than in the warm damp environment, but stronger... and probably the only way I can ever make bread in the cold Melbourne anyway (well, even with central heating, our rooms are only 19,20C, gonna save power, save the planet, right?).  So normally, if the bread is not ready before we go to bed, I just leave it in the kitchen, covered, over night, when we don't use heating at night time, the room temperature is usually 7-8C, similar to proofing breads in the fridge?


But this time, I want to see it happenning, like straight away, that's almost always the case with a new method...  so I heated up the oven and switched it off, leaving it pretty warm.  It's a very old oven we've got in the kitchen and it's on dial, so I can get the rough temperature, and I'd say, maybe around 30C? And it did proof quite quickly....  However, the gut feeling was, it wasn't holding up properly, so, after baking, it has shrunk a bit back... hmm....

So I can't say I'm totally happy, and surely will try again another time.

Mum's got the loaf anyway and she will give me the feedback I'd hope.