Oh god I love Melon Bread , but I haven't tried making it yet.
Here I found this for you!:
Melon Pan (makes 18 buns)
Bakers ratios are given in brackets
Bread dough
Strong white flour 400g (1.0)
Quick action dry yeast 14g (0.035) (X3 for fresh yeast)
Butter (unsalted) 40g (0.1)
Sugar 60g (0.15)
Salt 6g (0.015)
Water 228g (0.57)
Egg 60g (0.15) (This is about 1 large egg)
40g of dough per bun
Pastry dough
White pastry flour 240g (1.0)
Baking powder 6g (0.025)
Butter (unsalted) 80g (0.33)
Sugar 100g (0.42)
Egg 60g (0.25) (This is about 1 large egg)
25g of dough per bun
At room temperature in our kitchen (about 22C) it takes about 3.5 hours from start to finish.
1. Start with making the pastry dough. Cream sugar and butter. Mix until the color changes into something more whiteish.
2. Add the egg and mix until smooth.
3. Sift in the flour and baking powder bit by bit.
4. Roll into a ball and put into the fridge.
5. Now the bread dough: Mix flour, yeast, water and egg.
6. Work the dough until gluten is well developed
7. Spread out the dough, sprinkle salt on top and continue working the dough
8. Spread out the dough, sprinkle sugar on top and continue working the dough. It gets a bit messy now, as the sugar pulls the water from the gluten. Continue until the dough gets smooth again and comes off the worktop.
9. Spread out the dough, sprinkle little pieces of butter on top and continue working the dough. Now it gets really messy. Continue until the dough gets smooth again and comes off the worktop.
10. Shape into a ball and prove for about 40 to 60 minutes (dough doubled in size)
11. Near the end of the proof take the pastry dough out of the fridge and divide into 25g pieces.
12. Roll the pieces into balls and keep cool.
13. Turn out bread dough onto worktop, stretch and fold a few times (or punch down, whatever you want to call it)
14. Divide dough into 40g pieces and shape pieces into balls
15. Let balls rest for about 15 minutes. Shaping can take a lot of time - the first balls might be ready after you shaped the last one, depending on the room temperature
(Now comes the *scary* step, it sounds worse than it is)
16. Make the buns one by one: Roll out a ball of pastry dough (I could just recognize the worktop pattern through the dough)
17. Wrap the pastry sheet around a bread dough ball, without deflating the yeast ball, and without tearing the pastry sheet, and place on a greased baking sheet.
18. Make lattice-like impressions on top of the bun using a dough scraper or the back of a knife. You don't want to cut or tear the pastry dough
19. Sprinkle some sugar on top.
Steps 18 and 19 can be done for a batch of buns, but don't let them go too dry before you do this.
20. Proceed to the next bun.
The photo below shows the half-size buns being made: left the rested bread balls, middle the pastry balls, and right the bread balls wrapped in pastry sheets. You need the space between them as they'll rise quite a bit.
21. Let the buns rest for another 30 minutes before baking.
Again, you need to take into account room temperature, the time you need to make the buns and the capacity of your oven. You might want to put half of your bread dough into the fridge (to delay fermentation) in step 10.
22. Bake 12 to 15 minutes at 180C. The buns should turn very slightly golden.
23. Finished! Let them cool, and enjoy. They keep a couple of days, but might loose their crunchiness.
[sOURCE] : http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/melonbread
