liralen | An Pan Craving II (Reply)

There is a follow-up. I made them! I am so happy, too. It was pretty straightforward, and I just mostly followed the Japanese Cooking 101 recipe for An Pan, but used canned Anko (about half a can per batch).

Of course, I made changes. *laughs* The changes themselves were pretty small, in that I substituted a whole wheat pastry flour for the cake flour. The theory was that both were low-gluten flours, and I had one and not the other. Though, I have to say that cake flour is probably more finely ground than the soft wheat pastry flour I had, and the texture and flavor additions of the whole wheat bran and germ were actually quite nice when one likes those things. John's really into whole grain, so he liked these much better than if they'd been as white as real cake flour.

I also used a one ounce scoop for the red bean paste instead of trying to make balls by hand, that would have been really messy. Finally, I also used my steamed bun wrapping capabilities instead of just folding it the way they did in the video. It worked out pretty well.

I also did a little altitude adjustment by adding two tablespoons of the bread flour and nearly another quarter cup of milk. Flour just seems drier up here, and given the texture of the dough in the video, it really needed to be MUCH wetter than it ended up being with the measured amount of warm milk.

One really interesting thing is that the size of the An Pan is a little bigger than I imagined when I actually wrapped the little guys. They all grew significantly, which was encouraging.

The egg wash did the golden brown thing on top, but I think that I should have used the convection baking instead of the normal so that they would turn even darker. The black sesame seeds turned out perfect! And they smelled amazing while they were baking, it was really difficult to wait the necessary amount of time until they'd cooled enough to eat! And they are delicious. The bread turned out as soft, rich, with good chew, and just a little sweet as I wanted it to, and the red bean paste melted and spread with the baking of the bun. So it ended up being this lovely disk within the center of the bread. The sesame seed crunch contrasts nicely with all the other softness, and the flavors are so good together.

I think the only thing "wrong" about this recipe is the fact that I can now have as many an pan as I want, whenever I want them. *laughs and laughs*