Gudetama Pull-Apart Bread Bun Recipe

I meant to update this last week, but I fell sick again. -_- This time it was a bad cough, had difficulty breathing and could not sleep the entire night, as the breathlessness becomes worse when I lay down. In the end, I gave up and woke up at 4am to iron clothes, very random, lol, there was a huge pile waiting for me to clear anyway, so I thought I might as well make better use of my time since I can't sleep.

I went off to see the doctor after the clinic was open and doctor said it was bronchitis, put me on the nebuliser and sent me home with lots of medicine. Seeing the nebuliser reminded me of my boys when they were babies/toddlers, I remembered carrying my boys and administering it for them and they would always cry without fail. I have never used the nebuliser myself before this, and always wondered why they cried, I guess it was due the noise because there really isn't anything uncomfy about it. And the roles were reversed now, as my hubby instructed my boys to help me hold the mask, I shooed them away after a while because I had no problem handling it myself, lol. I'm a lot better by now, almost recovered,  I don't want to fall sick anymore, my trip is coming soon.

I know some of you are waiting for this recipe. I'm sorry I took so long with the recipe for these Gudetmama pull-apart bread buns, thank you for your patience. The reason was because I was playing around with a new recipe when I made this, and I needed another round to try and take down the measurements and steps.


This has got to be one of my favourite pull-apart buns designs, along with the Totoro and Baymax ring ones which I did much earlier.


The yellow portion is done by mixing in steamed mashed pumpkin. Please choose those with a more yellowish flesh, so the colour of the dough won't turn out too orange.


The benefit about pull-apart buns is that they stay soft and fresh longer because there is less exposed surface area.


This lazy egg is just too cute, hope you have fun making him.

GUDETAMA PULL-APART BREAD BUN RECIPE

Ingredients:
500g bread flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
50g butter, at room temperature
1 tsp instant yeast
375g milk
50g steamed mashed pumpkin
8g butter, at room temperature
Pan-fried bacon
Black food marker

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients, except butter, in a large bowl to get a dough. Add in butter and knead until dough is springy and soft, this takes around 10 minutes. If you have a bread maker, you can just use the dough function for this step, as well as step 2.

2. Cover the dough with cling wrap and keep in a warm place for it to rise. This takes around an hour and the dough should double in size. Do a finger test to check if it's ready.

3. Take dough out and punch out the air from the dough with your fist. 

4. Cut out around 100g of dough and mix with 50g of steamed mashed pumpkin and 8g of butter. Knead till the colours are even, you can add in a little bread flour if it is too sticky while you are working on it. When it's done, roll it out and form into a ball. Cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and set aside for 15 minutes. 

5. Using the plain dough, roll out the 16 portions of 50g, one at a time and form them into balls. Cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and set aside for 15 minutes.

6. Roll out the white dough of 50g each, one at a time and form them into balls. Grease a 20cm square tin, and place them inside. At this point, there will still be space, as the dough will double in size after proofing. 

7. Using the yellow pumpkin dough, shape into 16 Gudetama and place on top of the white dough, use a little water to "stick" if needed.  You can do them in different variations like what  I did. Cover with cling wrap or damp cloth and let the dough proof for 40 minutes. Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius and turn down to 140 degrees celcius. Place the tray at the middle rack and back for around 15 minutes. After 5 minutes of baking, cover the bread using aluminium foil.

8. After the bread has cooled down, place bacon blanket on some of the Gudetama, you can use pasta sticks to secure them if needed. Draw on the features using a black food marker.