Chicken and Spinach Stuffed Buns

With my new found love for baking, I keep experimenting a lot nowadays. I first made Pav a few weeks back and it was a super hit. Since then, there has been no looking back. Once yeast became my friend, I started experimenting a lot with it. I tried Pizza base, Calzone, Butter Garlic Naans. Everything was just perfect.

My latest experiment was these yummy chicken and spinach stuffed buns. They turned out delicious and disappeared within minutes of coming out of the oven.

You can also use some different stuffing instead of the chicken and spinach one which I have used.

Makes: 5-6 buns
Preparation Time: 2 hours 40 minutes
Cooking Time: 12 minutes

Ingredients:

To make the buns:
All purpose flour: 1 and 1/2 cup
Water: 1/2 cup
Sugar: 1 tsp
Active dry yeast: 1 tsp
Butter: 1 tbsp
Salt: to taste

To make stuffing:
Chicken: 125 gm boneless
Onions: 1 finely chopped
Garlic Paste: 1/4 tsp
Ginger Paste: 1/4 tsp
Turmeric Powder: 1/4 tsp
Chilli Powder: 1/4 tsp
Coriander Powder: 1/4 tsp
Yoghurt:  2 tbsp
Spinach: 2 cups shredded
Ginger: 1/2 tsp finely chopped
Coriander: 1 tsp finely chopped
Mint leaves: 1/4 tsp finely chopped
Ghee: 1 tbsp
Garam Masala: 1/4 tsp
Mozzarella Cheese: 1/4 cup
Sesame seeds: As required
Salt: to taste

Method of Preparation:

To make buns

1. Take sugar and yeast in a bowl. Warm the water and add it to the bowl. The water should not feel too hot to touch.
2. Cover the bowl with a moist cloth and keep it aside for it to froth. Once it froths you know that the yeast has become active. (Look at the picture below) .  I kept it for around 20 minutes for it to froth.
3. Add melted butter to the frothy yeast mixture and mix well. Add flour and salt and mix well.
4. Knead the dough well for 10-15 minutes to form a soft dough. Don’t worry if the dough is sticky initially as it will start becoming more elastic as you keep kneading. Use a little more flour while kneading if required.
5. Apply oil over the dough and keep closed with a moist cloth for 1 hour. The dough will nicely double up. You can keep it for more than an hour till it doubles up.
6. Gently deflate the dough and divide into 5-6 parts.

To make stuffing:

1. Cut the chicken into very small 1 inch pieces.
2. Heat oil in a pan. Add 1/2 onion and sauté till golden brown.
3. Add ginger paste, garlic paste, chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder and chicken pieces. Sauté for 2-3 minutes.
4. Add yoghurt and salt and mix well. Close lid and let cook till chicken is tender and completely cooked (Also the gravy should dry up). Keep aside and let cool.

5. Heat 1/2 tsp oil in a pan and sauté the shredded spinach.
6. Take the chicken and shred very finely with your hand.
7. Add to it the sautéed spinach, remaining onion, mint leaves, coriander, ginger, ghee, garam masala, cheese and salt to taste. Divide the mixture into 5 portions.

The Final Steps:

1. Grease a plate and place one portion of dough on it. Spread it out into a disk of 4 inches diameter.
2. Place one portion of stuffing on the dough. Seal the ends together as shown in the picture.
3. Repeat for all other portions.

4. Grease and dust a baking tray with flour.
5. Place the balls at a distance from each other with the sealed side facing down.
6. Cover with moist cloth for another one hour. The balls will double in size. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the buns.

4. Preheat the oven at 230 degrees Celsius.  Place the tray in the oven and let bake for 12 minutes. You will see a nice brown colour appearing on top of the buns. Cool on wire rack.

Common mistakes to avoid:

• Make sure that you do not use hot water with yeast and sugar as hot water would kill the yeast. Use water which is hot but not burning hot.
• To get good pav, kneading well is very important as kneading helps in developing of gluten in the pav and makes it stretchy and elastic. Well developed gluten is important to allow the carbon dioxide released by the yeast to be held within the dough helping it to rise.
• Use a tray which has a good height. When I made pav for the first time, my cloth got stuck to the risen dough and while separating the cloth from the tray, the dough got deflated 🙁