Pooh Bear Pumpkin Pull-Apart Bread

Happy weekends! My boys have gotten all their exams results back, the teachers are really efficient, lol. LT did fine, still plenty of room for improvements, but I think he still did better than IT's Primary 2 results overall, will have to wait for their report books to know. IT did well, he practically improve by leaps and bounds in English, he now has a distinction in English as well, along with Science and Maths. This is definitely no effort of mine, as I've always struggled and is still struggling with English, lol. This is all thanks to his English teacher this year, she is really good, very strict and teaches really well, we are both hoping she will follow the class up next year. He did improve on his Chinese as well, but not good enough for a distinction, it's still an A grade, never mind though, it's good enough for me. This round, I got him to do the bulk of the revisions without my supervision as well, I was a little worried at first for taking this risk, but thank goodness, his results turn out well. I hope he can keep it up next year.


I'm sharing another chigiri pan, or pull-apart bun recipe for today. This time I shaped them into Pooh Bear. I used mashed pumpkin to colour the dough and I was quite surprised with the lovely orange colour, no food colouring was used at all. I used the Japanese pumpkin which has a more vibrant orangey flesh.

And this is a slight variation of the previous pull-apart buns recipe I shared before. I shaped one of it as a full sized Pooh, strawberry jam was used for his shirt. The buns were filled with pumpkin fillings, I like the fillings, it has a nice buttery flavour and is not too sweet.


Not sure if you can tell, but I actually overturned the pan while removing it from the oven. I really have butter fingers, hiaz. Some parts broke apart, but I managed to place them back together on the tray.


One of this is not like the other, spot the difference. Pooh is wearing a sleeveless shirt here, lol. This is the initial version, then I thought he looked a little funny and realised he was missing his sleeves. But now looking at the photo, I think this sleeveless version with his chubby arms is rather cute too,


If you do not like pumpkin fillings, you can change it to chocolate, custard, etc. You can also leave out the fillings.

POOH BEAR PUMPKIN PULL-APART BREAD BUN RECIPE

Ingredients:

Bread dough:
250g bread flour
20g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
3g instant yeast (about 1 teaspoon)
120ml milk
100g mashed pumpkin
25g unsalted butter
Melted chocolate
Strawberry jam

Fillings:
300g mashed pumpkin
30g sugar
30g unsalted butter

Method:

1. To make filling, pan fry mashed pumpkin in a pan till fairly dry. Add in butter and sugar and pan fry till well mixed. Dish up and leave to cool. Do not add in the butter and sugar too early as it will cause the mixture to burn easily. Divide into 10 portions and set aside.
2. 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.

3. 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.

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

5. Divide the dough into 11 portions. Roll them out and form them into balls. Cover with cling wrap and let the dough rest for 15 minutes.

6. On a lightly floured work surface, roll each dough into a round disc. Press out any trapped air as you flatten the dough. Wrap each dough with pumpkin filling. Pinch and seal the seam tightly. Do this for the 10 portions of dough. Place 9 portions in a lightly greased baking tin. At this point, there will still be space, as the dough will double in size after proofing. Place the last dough with pumpkin fillings on top of one of the bread dough in the tin, we will be making one full size Pooh. Pinch off dough from the last portion and shape into ears for Pooh, also shape out hands and legs for the full size Pooh. Cover with cling wrap and let the dough proof for 40 minutes.

7. Preheat Oven at 200C. Lower the heat to around 150C and bake the bread for 17mins at the middle to lower rack. Once the bread starts showing signs of browning, cover the bread  with aluminium foil to prevent over browning.

8. After the bread has cooled down, use chocolate to draw on the details. Spread on some strawberry jam for Pooh's shirt.