cookingwithdog: Melon Pan

I've been wanting to try to bake melon pan for a while now. There's a bakery in my area that used to make really good melon pan, but they changed their recipe or something so it doesn't taste good anymore. This particular recipe was a big hit with my family but the cookie was not hard or sugary enough for me. It might be because of my family's unreliable oven. That's why the melon pan didn't brown on the top as nicely as it should have. Whenever I bake things in our oven they always come out pale even if they are fully cooked.

I got this recipe from the youtube channel cookingwithdog. It's a great channel that I really want to try out all the recipes from. You can also watch the original video here. Since the recipe is in video form, I transcribed the recipe so you can read it and follow along in the video. The process is time consuming and took me about 5 hours from start to finish.

Melon Pan
(5 pieces)

- Bread Dough -
140g Bread Flour (4.94 oz)
25g Sugar (0.882 oz)
1/3 tsp Salt
5g Non-Fat Dry Milk Powder (0.176 oz)
3g Instant Yeast (0.106 oz) - a little less than 1 tsp
1 tbsp Beaten Egg
70ml Warm Water (2.37 fl oz)
15g Butter (0.529 oz)
Bread Flour for dusting

- Cookie Dough -
25g Unsalted Butter (0.882 oz) Room Temp
35g Sugar (1.23 oz)
25g Beaten Egg (0.882 oz) Room Temp
80g Cake/Pastry Flour (2.82 oz)
1/4 tsp Baking Powder
Bread Flour for dusting

Directions

1.  Cookie dough: whisk butter in a bowl until creamy. Gradually add sugar and dissolve into butter. When the color turns white, slowly add the beaten egg. Do not add it all at once or the mixture will separate.
   
2. Add baking powder to cake flour and mix with a spatula. Sift the flour mixture into a bowl. Sift again into the bowl.
3. Add 1/3 of the cake flour mixture into the butter mixture. Mix with spatula. Repeat with the remaining cake flour mixture. Stir until all the flour is thoroughly mixed. Do not over mix the dough.
4. Place dough on cooking tray covered with plastic wrap. Flour your hands. Shape dough into cylinder. Wrap up the cylinder with the plastic wrap and cool in refrigerator for about 1 hour.
5. Bread dough: add sugar, salt, non-fat dry milk powder, and yeast to the flour. Mix well. Add the beaten egg to the warm water. Gradually pour into the flour and stir with the spatula until evenly mixed. Clean spatula with a pastry scraper and place flour mixture onto a pastry board.
6. Gather the crumbled flour mixture and form it into a ball. Briefly knead with hands. Throw dough onto board, fold it away, grab side of dough and throw again. Gather with scraper; knead dough with hands using body weight. Repeat process until dough is less sticky. Flatten dough and spread on the butter in the center of the dough. Grab outsides of dough towards center and knead in the butter. When the butter is mixed in, gather the dough with the scraper and form a dough ball. Continue to throw dough on board and knead. Repeat throwing and rolling process for 10 minutes. The dough should be smooth and glossy. Shape the dough into a ball and put in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place (80F) for 40 minutes. Dough should rise by 50%.
7. Remove plastic wrap. Dip finger in flour then poke a hole in the dough. If the hole quickly disappears the dough needs more fermentation.
8. Weight the dough on a kitchen scale. Flatten dough to remove the gas inside. Roll the dough into a long cylinder. Divide dough into 5 pieces; make sure they are equal in weight. Shape into a ball. Line up balls on a cooking tray lightly dusted with flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 20 minutes.
9. Divide cookie dough into 5 equal pieces making sure they are equal in weight. Flour hands. Shape pieces into a ball. Place a 3.5 inch diameter drawing of a circle underneath a piece of plastic wrap to use as a guide. Place the cookie dough ball on top of the circle and cover with another piece of plastic wrap. It helps to lightly flour the plastic wraps on the sides touching the dough so the dough will be easy to remove from the wrap. Flatten the dough ball into a circle to match the guide. Lightly dust a cooking tray with flour and place the cookie dough circles on it. Cover with plastic wrap. Set in the fridge in order to make the cookie dough easier to work with.
10.  Shape bread dough into a ball. Cover with the cookie dough circle. Hold ball upside down to bring cookie sheet near to center. Pinch the center and dip the ball upside down into the sugar. I like to roll the top of my dough around in the sugar to make sure it’s nicely coated. Hold melon pan on palm of hand and make a diamond pattern on top with the scraper.
11. Put the melon pan on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let melon pan sit in a warm place for second fermentation for 40 minutes at about 100F. Should double in volume.
12.   Preheat oven at 340F, bake for 12 minutes. Should be slightly brown on top, remove from oven. Place on cooling rack.

Melon pan before baking

Close up of melon pan before baking

Melon pan after baking