Red Dates Healthy Mantou ( pepitas)

                    Another Mantou experiment using red dates, tasted not bad at all :)

   Ingredients
    Plain flour  150g
    Wholemeal flour 70g
    Millet flour  30g ( millet grinded using coffee grinder)
    Lukewarm milk  130g
    Brown sugar  30g
    Instant dry yeast  3g


    Red dates:    30g ( seeds removed, soaked with 2 tablespoons of red wine for 30 minutes or overnight.  Get it steamed for 5 minutes.  Cut them into small pieces).
    Pepitas:   2 tablespoons

Note:  Only a few drops of oil needed altogether (oiled hand, oiled bowl, oiled top of the dough for rising).  During kneading, I had extra  2 tablespoons flour added as dough was a little wet/sticky.

Good quality red dates does taste sweeter.

well risen dough after one hour

nice and dry dough, flatten it really well.

Method
1.  Lukewarm milk, 1 teaspoon taken from the brown sugar together with yeast, whisk to dissolve well.  It should become frothy very quickly.

2.  Mix flours and sugar well in a bowl. Pour in yeast mixture, red dates and pepitas.  Bring everything into a rough dough.  Cover and leave for 10 minutes.  Gentle knead, fold and stretch for 10 seconds, cover and leave for 10 minutes.  Do that twice more during the 10 minute interval.
(Note: I found dough was still a little wet so, I had extra altogether 2 tablespoons flour added in).
 Dough should be smooth and glossy and not sticky /wet.

3.  Cover and let it rise for an hour or, until it has doubled it's size.

4.  Punch down air bubbles, dust flour on working surface,  roll it out into a rectangle sheet.  Dust flour again on top of the sheet, roll it up tightly and nicely.  Divide the buns, let it rise again about to an hour or, until the size has doubled.

5.  Set up steamer.  Steam at high heat for 15 minutes.

6.  Turn off heat. Remove buns only after 5 minutes.