Matcha rolls

Today, I decided to try and bake matcha rolls using this recipe.

I wanted matcha rolls like the ones which were part of the breakfast buffet of one hotel in Japan we stayed at. Not even the Japanese bakery in one of the little towns surrounding Zurich offers them.

First, I converted the measurements to metric units.

So, the ingredients were:

150 ml soy milk (I used the soy milk available at our local supermarket. My Japanese friend says it is not at all like soy milk in Japan, but really like water.)
30 g butter
30 g sugar
7 g dry yeast (which is, conveniently, exactly the contents of one little bag of dry yeast available in any supermarket around here)
200 g bread flour (I used the Swiss Halbweissmehl - literally "half-white flour")
1 teaspoon salt (which turned out to be a little bit too much. Next time I'll try a bit less. The salt is not in the picture above.)
1 1/3 teaspoons matcha
2 tablespoons sesame seeds (I used black sesame seeds for four rolls and white sesame seeds for the other four rolls. They are also not in the picture above.)

So I heated the soy milk with the butter and stirred until it melted. I had to bring the soy milk to a boil so the last solid lumps of butter disappeared.

 

I dissolved the sugar in that and waited until the mixture had cooled down to a good lukewarmth. Then I added the yeast and let it stand for five minutes, at which point it looked like this:

 

I had no idea what it should look like, but Ben suggested to let it stand for five more minutes. But after that, its appearance hadn't changed that much.

I combined the flour, salt and matcha.

I sifted that into a bigger bowl and added the yeast mixture.

 Then I first stirred, then kneaded that until it became a smooth ball of dough.

I covered the bowl with a damp kitchen towel and let the dough rise in a warm place for 40 minutes. It wasn't really triple the initial size then, so I left it for about 10 minutes longer, after which it looked like this:

 I cut the ball into eighths and placed them on a baking tray covered with baking paper.

 I covered them with the damp towel again and placed them in the warmth for 30 more minutes, after which they looked like this:

Then I shaped them into round balls (as best as I could).

Again, I let them rise for 20 minutes, after which they looked like this:

 

 I preheated the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, I patted the rolls with wet fingertips and sprinkled them with sesame.

 After having put them into the oven for 14 minutes, they looked like this:

 

On the inside, they looked like this:

 

Ben tried one and found it too salty. He let me have his share. I had six of them with just butter. I found them nice enough, not quite as fluffy as real Japanese matcha rolls, but close.

The procedure of making them is too long for having them for breakfast, though.