Ham and cheese mini buns

The past weekend was a wet one.... I mean the weather. It was raining on and off. I was watching the reruns of one of my favourite shows, intending to go out for window shopping/strolling/aimless loitering with dear at Vivocity after that. Just as the program was about to finish, it began to pour again. What better thing to do than to stay indoors?

I stood at the window watching the rain. I love to watch the rain. I could have pulled up a chair and sat by the window whole day, enjoying the cool wind, saying out the brand and model of every car that went by (it was tough! It's an expressway and the cars were continuous!) and watching the wipers of the cars below doing their left-right-left-right routine. When I was young, I would stretch out my legs and move my feet left and right, imagining they were the wipers of cars. For what? I do not know. It's this crazy, I-love-cars thingy in me, that exists till today.

But I decided I did want to spend the whole Saturday imagining my feet were wipers. So, I picked up one of my recipe books on breads, and chose to make a sweet dough. I love breads. Whenever I pass by the local bakeries, I would stop and look and always could not resist the temptation to buy a few, especially when in recent years, many of them came up with mini versions. For about $2.80, I could choose 5 different buns, and that totally satisfy me.

I happen to have ham and cheese in the fridge and they came in handy. It was also a good decision to make bread, as I could make use of the milk powder and remaining bread flour, which were reaching their expiry dates soon.

This is only the second time I am making bread, but I remember when I used this recipe the first time, I ended up with so many sausage and tuna buns! I remember being so amused at the proving of the dough, when it just grew and grew non-stop, like Jack and the Beanstalk (hey! it rhymes!). But silly me, I forgot to use my Kitchenaid to knead the dough...yes, I knead it by hand! How silly, no wonder my arms ache.

This time, I halved the recipe and made each bun smaller. For some reason, the dough did not grow that much too. At least it did stop growing. I ended up with 6 mini ham buns, 4 cheese buns, 2 plain ones (for my mum who eats neither ham or cheese). My guinea pigs gave it a thumbs up.

Click here for recipe of sweet dough and add filling as you like.