Doux Savory de la Vie: Panda Bread

Sorry for my lack of activity and visits for the past few days. My in-laws are here and we have been traveling around a lot. We will be heading to Cornwall next week, so here's my last recipe before I leave - a really cute and delicious Panda bread! Saw this over at Not quite Nigella and couldn't resist baking this. The red blobs on top were supposed to form a heart shape, but due to my lack of such skills, it looks like a floating ugly ribbon.

Panda Bread
Printable recipe
By Pig Pig's Corner

Prep time: 3 hrs
Cook time: 30 mins
Yield: 9 x 4" loaf

Ingredients:

210g 1 egg yolk + rice milk (i.e. use 1 egg plus enough rice milk to make up to 210 g)

230g bread flour

70g cake flour

30g caster sugar

4.5g salt

1 packet (7g) instant yeast

18g unsalted butter - softened at room temperature

8g green tea powder - dissolved in 10g boiling water

8g cocoa powder - dissolved in 8g boiling water

A few drops of red colouring

Directions:

In a microwave-safe bowl, lightly beat together the yolk and milk. Microwave for 30 sec.
In a clean mixing bowl, put in flour, sugar, salt, yeast. Mix to combine.
Add milk and egg mixture and butter to dry mixture.
Using and electric mixer with a dough hook attached, knead until elastic. The dough was a bit sticky, so I added about 1/2 tbs each of bread flour and cake flour to make it less sticky. I left it to knead for about 20 mins.
Divide dough (about 560g) into 3 parts: 60g for chocolate, 185g for plain white, 25g for red, the rest (about 290g) for green

Add chocolate paste to 60g dough and knead until well combined.
Add red colouring to 25g dough and knead until well combined.
Add green tea paste to 290g dough and knead until well combined.
Loosely wrap each dough in cling film, prove for 40 mins.

Knead/ fold each dough a few times to re-distribute the air. Prove for another 30 mins.

To shape & assemble:


1. Shape 70g of plain dough for the face and 2 pieces of 20g chocolate dough for the eyes.Shape to 5.5-6 inches in length.	2. Fill the gap in between the eyes with 20g plain dough.


3. Roll out and place the remaining plain dough over the shaped dough.	4. Divide the remaining chocoate dough into 2 pieces for the ears.


5. Use 20g of green tea dough to fill up the gap in between the ears.	6. Use 40g of green tea dough to cover the ears.


7. Make a slit on the top green tea dough.	8. For the heart shape, shape the red dough into a cylinder shape. Cut into 2 lengthwise. Place these 2 in the slit. Leaving a little gap in between the dough.


9. Fill in the gap with 15g of green dough.	10. Roll out and wrap the rest of the green tea dough all around the patterned dough. Leave the bottom unwrapped.


11. Place dough in a lined loaf pan.	12. Cover with cling film. Let prove for about 60 mins in an enclosed area (i.e. microwave/ oven). I placed it in a microwave together with a cup of hot water.