Rotiboy Coffee Bun Recipe: Make Your Own Coffee Bun With Simple Ingredients

Rotiboy Coffee Bun recipe

For travellers crossing the Causeway by bus and reaching JB Sentral by foot, the familiar and alluring smell of the coffee buns at Rotiboy will always be the first scent that greets the nose. This pocket-sized bread may look ordinary, but bite into its aromatic coffee-flavoured crust and you’ll find an interior that’s coated with an addictive buttery concoction.

Recreating this popular bun at home is easier than it sounds, and all you need is to be patient and follow the steps accurately. At the end of the day, you’ll be rewarded with a tasty coffee-flavoured bun that’s incredibly hard to resist. As usual, scroll down to the bottom for the full recipe.

The process

We’ll start our dough by combining lukewarm water and active dry yeast. When working with active dry yeast, always be sure to use warm water to activate the yeast. This ensures that the bread dough will rise beautifully and give a good structure to the bread.

Mix in milk and sugar, before sifting in bread flour and salt. There’s generally no need to sift bread flour, however, I find that sifting helps to give a lighter and airier texture to the buns. Mix everything up using a spatula until a rough dough forms. Cover with cling wrap or a slightly damp towel to let the dough rest for a short 15 minutes.

Sprinkle a clean working surface and your hands with flour and pour the dough out onto the surface.

Add unsalted room-temperature butter to the dough and start to knead until the butter is combined with the dough.

Continue to knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. This should take around 15 minutes if you’re kneading by hand.

If you’re feeling lazy, you can always pop the dough into a kitchen machine and let technology do the work. We’re using the BOSCH MUM5 Kitchen Machine, which comes with a large 3.9-litre stainless steel bowl that’s specially optimised for preparing bread dough.

The kitchen machine also comes with a powerful 1,000 watts motor that makes it easy to mix heavy dough or large volumes of ingredients. If you’re using a kitchen machine for this, around 10 minutes ought to do the trick.

To check that the dough is ready, flour your hands lightly and pull the dough gently with both hands. If light can seep through it and the dough looks smooth and elastic, it’s ready to rest.

Put the dough in a large bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest in the warmest part of your kitchen for about one hour or until it doubles in size.

After the dough has rested and developed a good structure, it’s time for us to split them into individual pieces.

Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and shape 10 pieces into equal-sized balls. Take the other two pieces and divide them into 10 smaller pieces. Cover everything with plastic wrap and leave for 15 minutes. The dough needs to be rested again for the gluten to adapt to its new structure.

Freeze up cubes of butter in the freezer and wrap them inside the smaller pieces of dough to form a ball. It’s important to freeze the butter so that it does not melt into the dough while shaping.

Now here’s the fun part, flatten the larger dough balls and put the smaller dough balls inside them. Roll everything up again to resemble a large ball. Make sure that the seams of the dough are facing down when letting the dough rest. At the end of the process, you should get a total of 10 balls. Cover the balls with cling wrap and rest for an hour.

While waiting for the dough to rest, prepare the coffee topping. In a small mixing bowl or cup, mix your favourite brand of black instant coffee powder with water. Reserve and set it aside.

In a stand mixer, mix in butter and sugar until everything is smooth and well blended. Mix in the egg yolk before adding in egg white.

Add in the coffee mixture and sift in all-purpose flour. Using a rubber spatula, fold the mixture together until everything is light and airy.

Transfer the coffee butter filling into a piping bag and pipe the coffee filling all over the buns in a spiral shape until it covers 3/4 of the top of the bun. Do not pipe to the bottom of the bun as the filling will spill outwards.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. We’re using the BOSCH Series 8 Built-in Stainless Steel Oven that comes with a unique 4D Hot Air technology. This ensures that heat is evenly distributed in the oven, regardless of how high or low the tray is placed.

It also comes with rapid heating function that makes the oven heat up much quicker than regular ones. This helps to shave off loads of time for time-starved bakers.

Bake the buns in a preheated 180°C oven for 18 mins. Be sure to eat the bread while it’s still warm. The crust will lose its crunch after some time. If you can’t munch all of them up at one sitting, keep them in the freezer where they will hold their shape for two weeks.

Rotiboy Coffee Bun Recipe

Yield: 10 buns
Cooking time: 120 minutes

Ingredients:

Dough
110ml lukewarm water
7g active dry yeast
100ml milk
40g sugar
350g bread flour
6g salt
20g unsalted butter, cubed, room temperature
50g salted butter, cubed and portioned into 5g cubes and frozen

Coffee topping
10g instant black coffee
10g water
60g butter, softened
65g sugar
1 egg, separated
70g all-purpose flour

Directions:

To prepare the dough, combine water and yeast.
Mix in the milk and sugar before sifting in the bread flour and salt. Mix thoroughly until a rough dough forms. Cover with cling wrap for 15 minutes.
Sprinkle a clean working surface and your hands with flour and pour the dough onto the surface. Add the unsalted butter to the dough and knead well until the butter is combined with the dough. Continue to knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. This should take around 15 minutes if you’re doing by hand or 10 minutes if you’re using a kitchen machine..
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave for about 1 hour till the dough has doubled in size.
Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and shape 10 pieces into balls. Take the other two pieces and divide them into 10 smaller pieces. Cover everything with plastic wrap and leave for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, flatten the smaller pieces of dough and add the 5g of salted butter cubes into each one of them. Roll it up to resemble a small ball.
Flatten the larger dough balls and put the smaller dough balls inside them. Roll everything up again to resemble a large ball. You should get a total of 10 balls. Cover with cling wrap and rest for an hour.
While waiting for the dough to rest, prepare the coffee topping
In a small mixing bowl or cup, mix the instant coffee powder with water. Reserve and set aside.
In a stand mixer, mix the butter and sugar until everything is smooth and well blended.
Mix in the egg yolk before adding in the egg white.
Add in the coffee mixture and sift in the all-purpose flour. Using a rubber spatula, fold the mixture together until everything is light and airy.
Transfer the contents into a piping bag and pipe the coffee filling over the buns in a spiral shape until it covers 3/4 of the top of the bun.
Bake the buns in a preheated 180°C oven for 18 minutes.
Serve while the bread is still warm. The crust will lose its crunch after some time.

Make this Rotiboy coffee bun recipe with BOSCH kitchenware appliances

While baking bread might sound intimidating, it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Plus, making them is always loads of fun! While it’s common not to push out perfectly baked bread during your first try, keep practising and you’ll be rewarded with the fluffiest of buns.

If you’re looking for more exciting recipes to make at home, check out our interesting Coriander Butter Cake recipe or our easy-to-make Rice Cooker Oyakodon.