Mia Bakes: No-Knead Wholemeal Ovolmatine Stuffed Buns

Hey lovely readers, I'm back with yet another wholemeal bread recipe, this time it's no-knead!
However, it's not going to be 100% wholemeal though, but only around 70% as I still have a couple tablespoons of all purpose flour leftover and wanted to finish them up ASAP.
Anyway, let's get over with the ingredients to get started!



To get 4 stuffed buns, you'll need:

Bread dough:

50g minus 1 tsp all purpose flour

100g superfine wholemeal flour

20g granulated sugar
(may reduce to 10g if you prefer your bread less sweet)
1 tsp vital wheal gluten
(may skip and replace back with flour, but bread may turn out more dense)
3/4 tsp instant dry yeast

1/8 tsp (or a pinch of) salt

10ml corn oil / vegetable oil

1 egg 

(mine was about 50g out of the shell)

50 - 70ml lukewarm water
(depending on hydration level of your flours and egg size)

Fillings:

Ovolmatine spread

chocolate chips
(I used 60% cacao)

recipe adapted from the super talented Chinese youtube-baker 茄子美食
She used bread flour and a lot more oil (both in the bread dough, during shaping before 2nd proofing, and after 2nd proofing before baking) so hers turned out a lot softer and fluffier on the inside and crisp-looking on the outside. 

First up, in a clean bowl add in 50g of all purpose flour and remove 1 tsp of it, replacing it with a tsp of vital wheat gluten. Then add in the rest of your dry ingredients, making sure that your yeast and salt are not in direct contact with each other.
Then, crack in your egg and and first add in 50ml of lukewarm (make sure it's not too hot if not it'll kill your yeast) water over the spot where you've pour in your yeast and mix well by stirring with a pair of chopsticks (highly recommend using chopsticks because the dough will be super, super sticky).
Continue adding water and stirring until you get a pastey, sticky yet smooth dough like so.

-credits to 茄子美食-

Then, add in the oil and give the dough another quick stir with the chopsticks until the oil gets fully absorbed by the wet dough. Then oil your hand slightly and pat down the wet dough roughly into a ball (MUST oil your hands because the dough sticks like a b*tch!) and cover with a clingwrap and leave it for 1st proofing overnight in the fridge until it roughly doubles (or at least 1.5x) in size. I left mine for about 11 hours in the fridge plus an additional 1.25 hours at room temperature after taking it out.

After the dough has risen back to room temperature, oil your work surface and hands generously, as the dough will still be extremely sticky, and dump your dough onto the oiled surface. Pat down on the dough to release the air pockets (no need to knead, as it's not exactly kneadable anyway) before shaping it into a log and cutting it into 4 equal pieces. Shape each piece of dough into a ball and set the rest aside under a piece of clingwrap while you work on the 1st dough ball.

The dough will be extremely soft and rather stretchy (and sticks to anything not oily enough) so there's no need to roll it out with a rolling pin. Instead you can just use your hands to pat it down and stretch it out into (roughly) a oval-ish rectangular shape. Then, add around 1 to 1.5 tablespoon of ovolmatine spread on the end of the dough nearer to you, or you can also spread it out in dollops all over the dough, before sprinkling a handful of chocolate chips all over the dough, careful to avoid the last inch of the dough piece that's further away from you as you need that seam area to close up the buns.

Then, starting from the end of the dough that's nearer to you, roll up the dough into a small log and press it tightly at the seams to close it up before folding it in half again and pressing the two (opened) end of the log together to seal the seams tightly. Then, shape it slightly into ball or squarish/rectangular bun, however you fancy, and set it on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
Repeat for the other 3 dough balls and you can play around with other fillings too!

I've also tried one with grated parmesan and shredded mozzarella and red cheddar, which unfortunately kind of split open during baking because the dough was stretched rather thin. 

Some of the chocolate/ovolmatine oozed out from the "weakest link" too. 

So if your choice of fillings are the dry type such as sultanans, pumpkin seeds, red beans and etc (I've also made a sultana with pumpkin seeds one that turned out super round and pretty), you can really stretch your dough out as thin as possible, because even if there are micro-tears in the dough your filling won't be oozing out. 

However, if you're filling your buns with chocolate chips, cheeses or any kind of spreads that get melted and viscous during baking, be sure to make sure that there's no hole on the surface of your dough, or you will just have to make do with a less perfect looking stuffed bun. 

Till then,

Mia Foo