豆ぱん〜 Mame Pan 〜 Sourdough bean bread

This is a variation of sourdough pain de campagne but with a Japanese twist on it.

Before we start, here is a bit of Japanese lesson for you... 'Mame' means beans and 'pan' is bread in Japanese so 'Mame Pan' is... literally 'Bean bread'!

I cooked red kidney beans with water and sugar until they were soft. (It's very common to cook beans in this way, and we often have sweet beans part of a savoury meal although they are bit like dessert...) I kneaded a generous amount of these beans into my Pain de Campagne dough.

I don't know if it was because of the beans, the cold weather or my broken scale, but the dough was little bit on the tight side and took longer to prove than usual. But in the end, it did come out great. ;D

Nice rise and good tough crust. :)

Look! Lots of sweet beans inside. 

My daughter loves beans and she loved my 'Mame Pan'. ♥

Remember to grab your FREE 2015 Calendar with 12 recipes including Sourdough Bread!

黒あん・白あん (Black bean paste, butter bean paste)

As I said on the previous Sesame pudding post, I'm going to share how to make black bean paste (黒あん, Kuro-an).

So..., it's pretty much the same as Azuki but this time I used freshly grated palm sugar.

Ingredients

Dried black beans 250g

Palm sugar (grated) 150g

Salt pinch

Water

1. Soak the beans overnight.

2. Put the beans in a large pot with enough water to cover the beans. Bring it to boil.

3. When the water is boiled, pour the water away and replace with fresh water. Bring it boil again.

4. Turn the heat down. Add sugar and salt. Simmer until the beans are soft.

5. Mash them in the way you like. 

I also made butter bean paste which is called 白あん (Shiro-An). All you need to do is to change the black beans to butter beans and you'll have a nice white bean paste. ;D

Those bean pastes can be used in cakes, puddings, biscuits... but also nice as is... So, I made little Kuro-An balls and Shiro-An balls for my after dinner treat. Yum yum yum;D