Chestnut Buns - Bread

Method

• I bought this jar of chestnuts in sugar syrup at a 100 yen shop.
• It contains 145 g, of which 75 g is solid.
• There were 10 chestnuts, so I chopped up 4 to mix into the sweet potato paste, and used the rest whole, one per bun.
• Make the sweet potato paste filling.
• Put the mashed sweet potatoes and the chestnuts in syrup in a pan (add the syrup) and simmer to reduce.
• Add sugar if you like.
• Prepare the bread dough.
• Put all the ingredients from the flour to the salt in the ingredient list in a bowl (keep the salt and yeast apart in the bowl).
• Warm the milk in the microwave, and pour over the yeast.
• Start mixing and kneading the dough.
• Add the butter halfway through and knead it in.
• Round the dough off into a smooth ball, cover with a tightly wrung out moistened kitchen towel and plastic wrap, and leave for the 1st rising until doubled in volume.
• Punch down the dough and divide it.
• I divided it into 6 portions this time.
• Cover the dough with a moist kitchen towel again and rest for 15 minutes.
• Deflate the dough again, and form into buns with the paste filling.
• I made round buns first and then kind of made them into chestnut shapes.
• Place the buns with the seam sides down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
• Cover again with the moistened kitchen towel and plastic wrap, and leave for the 2nd rising.
• It's done when it has doubled in volume.
• Pinch the pointy ends to make the buns more chestnut shaped.
• Brush the buns with the remaining egg, and sprinkle on the white poppy seeds.
• Bake at 180C for about 13 minutes and they're done!
• The buns are about this size.
• They look like this in the middle.
• I used 45 g of paste filling per bun and had some left over, so if you stuff the buns a bit more you should be able to use it all up.
• I these are made with dark brown sugar (20 g) instead of light brown sugar.
• The buns became a little bit darker.
• This one is stuffed half and half withChestnut paste and chunky red bean paste.