Christmas Star-Shaped Breads with Brown Sugar

Well, here again ... not fond in baking bread but baked breads twice in a row within a week. So, what has caught my eyes or interest me ? The lovely designs of course. But I'm so eager to try out these star shapes ... I supposed this star-shaped breads can be baked any time ... so I couldn't wait till Christmas ... lol ! Also, with some left-over cake flour, just nice to finish it off.

Recipe source : cookpad
Below my slightly modified version and notes in blue.

Christmas Star-Shaped Breads with Brown Sugar
Ingredients:
190g Bread flour
60g Cake flour
70g brown sugar (I used 60g)
145ml Milk
5g Dry yeast
25 Shortening (I replaced with unsalted softened butter)
3g Salt
Some pistachio nuts for decoration.

Methods:
1) In a small pan, heat and warm the milk to body temperature. Add all the ingredients except butter into a bowl, and mix well. (I used stand mixer fitted with the dough hook to mix the ingredients in low speed. Gradually add the milk in to gauge the texture).
When it starts to come together, add the butter then knead by hand into a soft, smooth dough. (I added about 1.5 tablespoons of bread flour as the dough is slightly sticky).
Place the dough into a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size.

2) This dough contains a lot of sugar, so it takes a long time to rise. (Mine took about 1 hour 25 mins - 1st proofing). After the proofing, gently punch down, divide into 10 even pieces, and let it sit for 10 minutes.
(I weighed the dough and divided 6 rounds of 65g each, used remaining to make some smaller designs for the center)

3) Then form into shapes. The picture shows how to do it.

Cropped pictures from the web page for easy reference:

4) Make an octagonal, hexagonal, pentagonal star shapes according to the size of the dough.

5) The dough looks like this. When the cuts are deep, the star-shapes look nice after baked. Proof the dough (2nd proofing).
(I covered the dough and let it rest about 15mins)
The next step is baking.

6) Decorate a little with some nuts. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 15 minutes or until golden and cooked through. Check the bread after 10 minutes.

Baked these for our brekkie ... but couldn't wait to try one for supper. Yummy! The bread is soft and not too sweet. I find that this dough is like Honey Bread, not sticky and very easy to handle. Will definitely bake these again during Christmas ^-^!

I'm linky this post to Cook and Celebrate (Christmas 2014), organized by Yen from Eat your heart out, Diana from Domestic Goddess Wannabe and Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids.

I am submitting this post to Best Recipes for Everyone (November 2014 Event: My Bread Story) hosted by Fion (XuanHom's Mon Kitchen Diary).