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| Texture is flakey and soft, bread is moist and slightly sweet, pulls kind of like cotton candy |
I feel like I have to race to finish a dish or dessert by sunset... and it gets dark quickly these days! I finished baking these at around 4:30 and by the time it was cool enough to handle, it was too dark to take a good picture. I'll say it here so maybe it'll motivate me to allocate some money to this fund.. but I think it's finally time for a new upgraded camera. I've probably said it before.. but I'll keep remind myself. I thought this would just be a phase, but this has been such a huge part of my life for the past 4.5 years. I've grown to love photography almost as much as baking. My camera is simply not cutting it again. I sit and edit.. many times frustrated at the lack of clarity and bad locations of the AF points... I don't have much time to sit around during the day and stage pictures anymore. I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get to have a proper photo shoot of these breads.. but I'll make it another day.. my mom insists on me teaching her... maybe there is a reason why I'm at home. She's really been inspired by all of my cooking.. but sadly I've never asked her for her recipes... just because I don't even think she writes things down.. ever. These breads took "all day"to make .. I started making it around lunch and it was done at dinner... I remember now why I haven't made it in so long... I usually don't have that much time on any given day to devote to baking!!
I've made bread this way before. It's been a hit or miss. Once I left the tangzhong in the fridge for a few days and it turned grey (couldn't find time to make it)... another time I didn't knead enough and the bread was dry. I decided to make the whole recipe today since I have a lot of family around who will eat it up... it's one of my favorite sweet breads recipe... the texture is amazing... it's flakey.. fluffy.. kind of like pulling cotton, and it stays soft for days! There are a lot of tutorials on this bread, and I found a new recipe on "the fresh loaf." The recipe was a bit different than the one I use, it had half and half! (YUM!) I've never used it in bread before and always have it on hand.. so.. why not :) ... this bread is perfect for breakfast.. and snacking... my family devoured a lot of it when it hot out of the oven.. because nothing beats that... I won't look for another recipe. I believe this is the closest I will get to those Chinese bakery breads I love so much.
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| Each "bun" is - 100 grams dough, 30 grams filling |
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| Each "roll" is 150 grams dough |
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| op! scrambled egg- wash! |
Click Below for the Wonderful Recipe: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32997/hokkaido-milk-bread-tangzhong
Tangzhong- 1 cup water, 1/3 cup AP flour
Bread :
3/4 cup whole milk
1/2 cup half/half
1/4 cup melted butter
2 eggs
800 grams AP flour (I used Gold Medal)
50 grams milk powder ( I used nonfat)
4 tsp dry active yeast ( my jar of yeast is 6 mos past the best by date and it still makes beautiful loaves.. finally at the bottom of the jar.. time to buy a new one!)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
Tangzhong (above.. all of it) cool mixture until you can touch it easily.
- Tangzhong - mix until it thickens, and when you run a spoon across the surface you can see a line... I didn't measure the temp. but I have in the past... just couldn't find my thermometer. Mine did not get as paste like as the one pictured on the fresh loaf's website.
- I think the recipe just called for butter, I wasn't sure if it was melted or softened... so I used melted.
- Place all ingredients into your stand mixer bowl, gently mix until almost all incorporated
- Knead - 15 mins in a large stand mixer with dough hook, I looked for the hole when stretched.. and honestly.. I didn't know what to really look for because my dough had a hole in it after 5 minutes.. I just kept the machine on ( scraping down every few minutes) until the dough was soft .. the dough is sticky, and mine did not form a ball when it was being mixed.
-Red Bean Paste- I bought a can of sweetened red beans.. it was way too sweet... I diluted it with water a few times, and strained it... still too sweet actually. I ran it in my food processor to get it to a paste like consistency, added about 1/2 tbsp AP flour, and cooked it on a lightly oiled pan until it thickened ( over med heat) and added a splash of half and half in hopes that it'll mellow out the sugar. I didn't have the time to make this from scratch... but will next time, the consistency and sweetness is more to my liking than the store bought stuff... The can was about $2 so not bad if you have a sweet tooth.
- After the first rise is over ( I let it go around 1.5 hours,) pull and weigh the pieces of dough so they're even. I've run into problems with skipping this step a lot with funky looking pieces after baking.. so don't skip it!! Here are my measurements for the full recipe!
~Milk Loaf- 5X9 loaf pan, 4 X 150 grams dough
~Red Bean Filled Buns - 8 inch cake pan 6 X 100 grams dough, 6 X 30 grams filling (make them into balls)
~Twisted wreaths - 2 X 160 grams dough
- Shaping the dough - my dough seemed to have a horrible "snap back" every time I tried to roll it out.. this took a lot longer than most of my other breads... I don't know if this is normal..
Milk loaf - roll out each piece to approx 5 in X 7 in , fold in the sides to make a ~3 inch X 7 inch piece, roll it up, pat it down slightly (don't worry it will expand to the pan size!) put seam side down into oiled pan , continue with the other 3 pieces
Red bean filled buns - roll each piece to a 5 inch diameter circle, place in filling, seal up the filling, place into pan seam side down, continue with the other 5 pieces.
Twisted breads - tutorial on my cinnamon twisted bread page :) - these are the mini versions of my big one, it definitely dried out the quickest, and baked real fast too. I think if i were to make little ones again, I'd bake it at 325 for 15-20 mins.
Pans- I used three types -
- Glass : nice crust , did not brown as fast
- non stick : browned a little too much
- toaster oven tray: with parchment - browned very fast
I like the way the glass pan the best, plus it's easy to see if everything is nice and golden...
- Second Rise - since it's Fall, the house is cooler and I can't find a warm place so I turned on the oven at 280 degrees for 2 minutes, and shut it off... it should be warm enough for your hands to be inside.. anything more.. too hot!! open up the door and let it cool down a bit. It will rise to almost double in around 50 minutes, so turn on your oven around 45 minutes after you've shaped your dough. It will "grow" a LOT in the oven.
Egg wash - wooo this browned way too quickly, definitely have the foil ready to cover it to prevent it from over browning.. mine was definitely a few shades darker than I'd like. For my egg wash- one whole egg, splash of half and half, 1 tsp sugar. Whisk with fork to combine. Brush on before baking. Don't overdo it, it'll turn to scrambled eggs in the crevices! This made a beautiful brown top.. just like the bakeries.. but next time... I will move the racks a bit lower.. or loosely tent it with foil at the beginning.
Bake times-
- Honestly don't know how to tell if bread it done by just looking at it... when it's evenly brown.. I touch to see if it seems sturdy and the bread isn't jiggling when moved. Sometimes I whip out a thermometer as well. I hope and pray when it comes out it doesn't collapse. The two big loaves took around 35 minutes, but that might have been over what the actual time was... so.. I guess around 30-32 minutes? ( tented with foil!!)
- I will definitely make the loaf and filled buns again, but may not make the twisted wreaths... they came out nicely out of the oven, but I think I over baked them so they became hard and dry after a few hours... will stick to the large loaves for this shape... The texture of this bread shined a lot more through the big loaves than the small ones.
-Extra egg wash? - There was plenty! Used as the egg wash for fried catfish .. for dinner.. don't waste!
My mom was trying to figure how much this batch cost since she often buys red bean breads at 99 ranch.. at around 4-5 bucks a loaf. (This recipe yield 2 large loaves - 600 grams each, and 2 medium size pastries.) We figured the bread part was around $3.50 for supplies, and the filling... was around $2.50. If we made the red beans ourselves we would have saved around a dollar.. so this whole recipe would be around $5-6... not including the electricity... so yea.. it's a bit more than I usually spend (it's a lot more than I'd normally make for myself at school) and a lot more time invested.. but the results are well worth the effort! Try it today!
EDIT: not sure why all the words are being cut off at the end of the line and continuing on the left .. SORRY!
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