Panda Bread

Panda Bread

I've been meaning to post on panda bread for awhile. Unfortunately, I only had a chance to make this once and was so concentrated on doing it right that I didn't take any pictures of the steps. But the pictures at the blog perfect pandas has a set of pictures that'll make the whole process perfectly clear! I was mind-boggled the first time that I heard about panda bread, but fear not, it's really about clever arrangement of different flavored dough. Totally doable! I'll be completely honest and say that the bread itself turned out a bit dry for me, but the panda design is so cute that that's easy to overlook. Happy Baking!
I admit that some of them ended up looked more like foxes. ^^;

Recipe adapted from perfectpandas with converted measurements
Ingredients:
1 + 1/3 cups (230g) bread flour
1/2 cup + 1Tb (70g) cake flour
2.5 Tb (30g) sugar
3/4 cup milk (210 g) + 1 yolk
3/4 tsp salt
5/4 Tb unsalted butter
1/2 Tb (4g) yeast
8g matcha dissolved in 10g hot water
8g cocoa powder dissolved in 8g hot water

Directions
1.)Beat yolk and milk lightly and microwave for 30 seconds or heat to 38 degrees Celsius.
2.)Place bread flour, cake flour, sugar, salt, butter, yeast and the milk and egg yolk mixture to the bread machine. Set on dough cycle, kneading for 20 minutes. Restart the dough cycle and knead for 15 minutes.
3.) Divy up dough as follows: 210 g plain, 75g chocolate and remainder for matcha.
4.) Add cocoa mixture to the dough of 75 g and knead to distribute. Add green tea mixture to the reserved ball of dough and knead to distribute.
5.) Place the balls of dough in separate greased bowls/ plates and cover loosely with oiled cling-wrap. Let dough proof for 30-40 minutes.
6.)Punch air out of the dough and proof for another 20-30 minutes.
7.) *you may want to refer to the picture tutorial for the assembly*
Take 90 g of the plain dough. This will be the face of the panda. Use two pieces of 27g chocolate dough rolled lengthwise as the eyes of the face.
8.) Add a strip of 30 g plain dough between the eyes of the panda.
9.) Envelope the face with the remaining plain dough. Add two pieces of 17.5 g chocolate dough for the ears.
10.) Add 70 g of the matcha dough for the space between teh ears.
11.) Wrap the rest of the matcha dough around the current lough.
12.) Place dough in greased loaf pan, cover with oiled cling wrap and proof for 50-60 minutes.
13.)Bake at 392 F for 25 to 30 minutes.
14.)Let cool and cut loaf (recommend with a serrated knife) to see panda face! :)


The loaf from the oven~ I thought I had messed up when I first saw it like this xD.