Our School Holiday à la Italian Mini Bread Bites

~ Aged-Cheddar & Oregano Mini Bread Bites ~

It is the school holiday again, another great opportunity for me to bake something with my little one. It is my little 3-year-old’s favourite activity to play with doughs. Instead of playing with “Play Doh”, we got our hands dirty with bread doughs. We made à la Italian mini bread bites, improvised from the Cheesy Bacon Bread Bites recipe by Kenneth Goh, which I have bookmarked for some time.

The original recipe baked some real soft buns but ours was nothing like that. We started our day late. By the time we prepared the dough, it was lunch time, followed by nap time. We left the dough to proof for hours before we knead and mould into small bite sizes for baking. Oops, no spongy soft bread bites but stiff, tummy filling ones! The guru, Kenneth Goh, will be surely have his jaw dropped if he sees this.

I am not even sure if you name this over or under proofed bread. Nevertheless, the mini bread bites turned out fine. It is not as soft as the original recipe but it definitely comes with great aroma and is addictive to bite. The more you bite, the more you feel like another bite. This savoury mini bread bites make neat snacks for my little one too. So, this will be the frequent snack when school term resumes in January.

As I am a baking noob, I am truly contended with the AMC Navigenio which can be used for all my daily automatic cooking and double as an oven for all my occassional baking attempts as a beginner. As and when I am on my baking mode, I just bake with my existing AMC Pots I already have. There is no need for baking trays which I do not use on a daily basis. Perhaps, some small tartlet moulds if I ever need to bake some.

Aged-Cheddar & Oregano Mini Bread Bites Recipe (Yielded 50 mini bites, may vary depending on size of mould used) :

A. Ingredients

250 grams Bread Flour (plus a little more for surface dusting)
100 grams Lukewarm Fresh Milk
50 grams Cheddar Cheese (shredded)
1 large Egg (65 grams with shell)
20 grams Butter (room temperature)
6 grams Instant Yeast
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoons Dried Oregano Flakes

B. Instruments

Cheese shredder
Cake/Bread Mixer
Any Mini Cookie Mould
Baking sheets (two round sheets of 24cm pan base diameter for baking)

AMC Baking Method :

A. Making the Dough & Shaping the Mini Bread

Add bread flour, lukewarm fresh milk, salt, egg and yeast in the cake/bread mixer. Knead on medium speed till well mixed.
Add butter, oregano and shredded cheese into the mixture and continue to knead on high speed till dough is formed. Leave to proof for an hour until dough is double the size.
Dust work surface and hands with some flour. Place dough on the work surface. Press dough into a flat 2cm thick dough and cut dough into mini bread with a small cookie mould.
Reroll the excess dough trimmed out from shaping of the mini bread.

B. Baking the Dough

Line a round baking sheet in a 24cm 5.0 litre Pot unit. Arrange mini bread bites in the pot unit on the baking sheet.
Place Pot unit on Navigenio and bake with heat level “3” upto 50°C or “Meat Window”. Use Audiotherm as an indicator by turning it on, place on lid knob, indicating 50°C or “Meat Window”.
When Audiotherm beeps, turn off both Navigenio & Audiotherm. Remove lid and place pot unit on the up-turned lid.
Cover pot unit with Navigenio turned upside down. Turn Navigenio on lower heat level “-“ with Audiotherm activated to bake for 8 minutes. (Subsequent batches for 10 minutes.)
When Audiotherm beeps, turn off both Navigenio & Audiotherm. Remove all mini bread bites to a bread basket.
Repeat step 1 to 5 above for the second batch of mini bread bites.
Serve warm in a bread basket.

Tips : As a matter of fact, an AMC Navigenio combined with any AMC Pot unit is the smallest and most efficient baking oven in the world. Instead of heating a baking oven with approx. 60 litres volume, you can bake cakes, pastries, cookies etc. in an AMC pot (approx. 3 litres volume) on the Navigenio. You save up to 75% time and energy!