Por Lor Pau - WDB3

WORLD DAY OF BREAD 2008

The 3rd World Day of Bread falls on 16 October 2008 and is hosted by the gracious Zorra of Kochtopf. This blogging event simply requires bloggers to bake or buy bread and blog about it - it's that simple!

For this year's event, I would like to blog about this bread that is representative of Hong Kong - the infamous Por Lor Pau.

This bread is found in almost any bakery in Hong Kong as well as roadside coffee shops -"Cha Chan Tang" (茶餐廳). It is almost the staple breakfast of the grassroots in the early days of HK.

Nowadays, most coffee shops serve Por Lor Pau fresh from the oven with a thick slab of icy cold butter . Slash the bread horizontally across and insert the slab of cold butter. Down it with a big sip of "silk stocking" milk tea, yummy ar!

The fragrant and crispy crust is the soul of this simple bread as it has no filling in it. The crust must be rich, full of buttery flavour, sweet and crispy while the bread itself must be soft. This bread is best eaten when it's just out of the oven. A bite into it and you'll see the crispy and aromatic crust shattered into bits. Clean up the bits (with your mouth), that's the best part of this bread!







Ingredients: (8 pieces @ 35g each)
Crust:
120g cake flour
10g milk powder
10g custard powder
60g icing sugar
3g baking powder
30g lightly beaten egg
60g melted butter

Method for crust:
1. Mix all the ingredient together to form a soft dough.
2. Chill in the refrigerator for use later.
3. Divide into 8 portions of about 35g each.
4. Shape them into a flat round disc (I used a piece of glad wrap and a rolling pin to do this).

Bread: (8 pieces @ 60g each)
185g bread flour
50g cake flour
4g yeast
15g milk powder
0.5 tsp salt
35g sugar
25g egg
75g water
75g TangZhong or Water Roux
20g butter
(Bread recipe: 65℃湯種麵包 陳郁芬 Yvonne)

Method:
1. Mix all ingredients except butter to form a dough. Add in butter and knead till dough is smooth and pliable.
2. First prove - prove dough for about 45 - 60 minutes.
3. Punch down dough and divide into 8 pieces of about 60g each. Roll them into round balls.
4. Rest the pieces for 10 - 15 minutes.
5. Shaping - shape each piece into a nice and smooth round ball (see photo above).
6. Final prove - prove the round bread pieces for 45 minutes at 38C.
7. Apply egg wash to the shaped bread and top it with a piece of the crust. Apply a little egg wash on the crust.
8. Bake at 190C - 200C for 15 - 20 minutes.
9. Serve hot.