깨찰빵 Korean Tapioca Bread Recipe (Without Premix)

So today I'm trying to make Korean tapioca bread without the premix. 

I dunno if you guys have tried this bread before, but it has a unique nutty roasted flavour, probably coming from the black sesame seeds that the bread contains, and also the bread is crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. For me when I first tried Korean tapioca bread, these were the things that defined the bread. 

I bought some tapioca bread premix to make the bread myself at home and it turned out great! The tapioca bread premix was surprisingly sold in my local Tesco. It had recently opened a full aisle of Korean goodies covering half of it. I was so excited!! Unfortunately, 2 weeks later the aisle had shrunk considerably to fit on one shelf! The tapioca bread premix was no longer there for sale :( I guess the Korean goodies wasn't a good seller! SHAME! Where are my fellow Korean Fried Chicken fans out there??

Anyway the Korean Tapioca Bread recipe I will be trying today is from a youtube clip, the direct link is [here], the ingredients were thankfully translated in the comments section on googleplus, I'll paste the link for that too [here].

Ingredients

38g Cake Flour

216g Tapioca Starch

30g Corn Starch

60g Shortening

1 Egg

100ml Water

10g Black Sesame- Roasted

1 Tbsp of Soy Sauce

1Tbsp Vegetable Oil 

Method

1. Seive all dry ingredients together (cake flour, tapioca flour, corn flour). (I didn't have any cake flour, so I used plain flour, measured 38g of it, took 2 tbsp of it out and replaced with 2 tbsp of corn flour- I heard it was a good substitute, looking back now... The substitute was exchange 2 tbsp of plain flour for 2 tbsp of corn flour, for every CUP of plain flour.... DOH!)

You can buy tapioca flour in most Asian grocery stores. 

 2. Roast black sesame seeds. (I roasted the seeds on a dry pan, I only put the seeds in for 10 seconds before they started popping all over the place, so they were roughly in the pan for a total of 30 seconds)

3. Add the black sesame seeds to the dry mixture and mix well. 

4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add in the wet ingredients (shortening, soy sauce, egg, oil & water) (I didn't have any shortening so I just used plain butter)

 5. Mix and knead well. 

 6. Cling film over and leave in the fridge for 15 minutes. 

7. 15 minutes later, knead the dough and divide into spheres of sizes of your liking. 

(I managed to make 15 balls from this mixture. I lined my baking tray with baking paper. )

8. Spirtz the balls with water. 

 8. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius and put in the oven for half an hour. 

9. WALA! 

 The balls didn't puff up as much as I liked, but I'm thinking its cause I put too much corn flour into the mixture..

 Close off, rip off inspection! Go go go gadget!

 Hard outer crust and chewy interior!

It definitely didn't puff up! I remembered the bread to be more airier than this! I'm hoping that altering the cornstarch to what was suggested will solve this.. I'm not sure if substituting butter for shortening effected the result as well?! Why do Americans like to invent ingredients up?? "Don't they know that ish is bad for y'all?!", "It's so bad, but it tastes so darn good!".  Anyhuuuu, I did like the taste of the tapioca bread just not with how it didn't puff it! The dough should have been more light and mine turned out slightly dense!

This one needs another round! 

Stay tuned for round 2!