Healthy Edible Christmas Tree

12 more days to go for Christmas. Time really flies. I still vividly remember that I was celebrating last year Christmas in Brisbane Australia, but I felt like it was only few months ago. The Christmas atmosphere in KL indeed differs from Australia, you basically can only feel the season preparation in shopping mall but not anywhere else outside.

In Xmas last year, I invented a lot of creative Christmas bakes but mainly are on cakes and swissroll. In order to make a difference for this year, I make these "fake Croissants" and build my own version of edible Christmas Tree. Well, you must be wondering why I called it as fake croissant. In fact, I'm just making the normal sweet bun and stuff it with luncheon meat, then roll it by using making croissant shape method. What a surprise when the bread texture inside is swirling just like croissant, the only difference are they are not oily at all as well as not flaky as croissant. Of course, the effort and time will be saved so much because you do not need to roll the dough and incorporate the butter into layers.

Once you take a bite, your mouth would be bursting with the juicy, salty taste of luncheon meat, together with the slightly sweet, soft bun.

For making bread, I usually omit those artificial bread softener. Hence, I prepare the Gelatinized Starch (Yukone method, also known as Water Roux, 汤种) and incorporate into bread dough. This Japanese method is using 1:5 ratio, in other words, 1 cup of flour and 5 cups of water. As for me, sometimes I will still change it accordingly as Malaysia's weather is more humid and naturally our flour is more damp.

See my inner bread texture.

Just the matter of arranging these buns into Christmas Tree

See below for Hankerie's recipe

Ingredients
Tangzhong
1/2 cup bread flour
180-200g water


2-1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 medium egg
3 cups bread flour
1 Tbsp butter
Ready fried luncheon meat (cut into shreds)


Method

1. Pre-prepared tangzhong. Cook until sticky feel.
2. In separate arge bowl, add yeast, warm water, sugar, and salt. Stir until dissolved. Add the egg, and 2 cups of flour. Mix well. Slowly add the remaining amount of flour until dough is formed. You may or may not use the full amount of flour. It depends on the humidity of your weather. 
3. Turn dough out onto floured board. Knead dough for about 6 minutes, adding more flour by the tablespoon, if necessary. 
4. Until you see the gluten appear in the dough, add on the butter and knead it.
5. Grease a medium bowl. Put dough into the bowl and then turn dough over so that the top of the dough is also lightly greased. Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and let the dough rise in warm, draft-free place until double in size or about 1 hour.
6. Punch down dough. Turn it out onto a floured table and knead out all the bubbles for about 5 minutes. Roll dough out and shape it long triangle. Wrap it with the luncheon meat with same method of making croissant
7. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease baking sheets. Set these buns on each baking sheets, cover with clean kitchen towel, and allow to rise in warm, draft-free place until double in size or for about an hour. Lightly beat the egg yolks. Brush egg yolk on top of rolls after they have risen. 
8. Bake rolls for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove buns from oven and turn out onto rack. 

I am submitting this post to this month's BYOB - #BakeYourOwnBread hosted by -Heather from girlichef and Conniefrom My Discovery of Bread