Sourdough Bread Recipe With Dry Milk

This sourdough bread recipe makes the naturally leavened version of Japanese milk bread or Hokkaido milk bread. Milk bread is a super tender white bread that originates in Japan, that uses a tangzhong method in the dough.

In a tangzhong method, a small amount of flour is cooked in milk or water into a thick paste. What this does is it pre-gelatinizes the starches in the flour so that they can absorb more water.

Homemade

Flour can absorb twice as much hot liquid as it can with cold liquids. The texture of this thick paste will be gelatinous and thick, and it's a great way to add extra moisture to a bread dough without losing structure.

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In this sourdough Hokkaido milk bread, a sourdough starter is what will leaven the loaf. This will bring a slightly tangy flavor to the milk bread. The bread takes longer to be made than if it was made with commercial yeast. This is because natural yeast has a much slower fermentation process.

The timings provided in the baker's schedule can be adjusted to suit your schedule. The bread uses an enriched dough, with egg, milk, and butter for tenderness and flavor.

Find the exact ingredient amounts for this sourdough milk bread in the printable recipe card at the bottom of this post. Here is a rundown of what you will need.

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After the first bulk fermentation has been completed and giving it the initial dough rise, the dough can be refrigerated overnight or up to 24 hours before shaping. This can give more flexibility in the timings but do bear in mind that the longer fermentation time will increase the sourdough tang.

To make this sourdough roll recipe you need an active starter. If you don't have one, here is how tomake your own sourdough starter.

If you do have one, keep feeding anddiscardingregularly to keep the acid content in the starter low.Too much acidcan affect the structure of the bread.

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In a bowl, mix all the starter ingredients until well combined. Scoop the mixture into a clean jar and cover it with a loose lid or plastic wrap and leave it in a warm place to double overnight.

In a medium saucepan, combine the flour and the milk for the tangzhong. Place this over medium heat and keep whisking until the mixture is cooked into a thick paste. Remove it from the heat and scoop it into the bowl of a stand mixer.

Pour the cold milk over the tanghzong in the mixer to cool it down. Add in the sugar, the main dough flour, milk powder, egg, salt, and ripe sourdough starter. Turn the mixture onto low speed and combine it into a shaggy dough.

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Add in the softened butter a few cubes at a time and continue kneading for a further 10-12 minutes until the dough is strong and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then break off a piece and see if it can stretch out really thin without tearing. This is called the windowpane test and is a good way to see that the gluten has developed enough.

Let the dough rise in a warm spot (ideally around77°F/25°C) for around 4 hours until it has bulked out by around 50%.

If you have a cold kitchen, create a warm and humid spot by placing the dough into a turned-off oven alongside a bowl of boiled water. Replace the water as needed when it cools down.

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Punch down the dough and pull it from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Weight the dough, then cut it into 3 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a ball.

Sourdough

Use a rolling pin to roll each dough ball on the work surface into a long oval, around 20cm/8-inches in length. Roll up each piece like a swiss roll. Place each roll into a greased or parchment paper-lined 9x5 inch loaf tin.

Let the bread rise in a warm spot, ideally around77°F/25°C until it has about doubled in size. The proofing time will vary but in a warm space, this usually takes around 3-4 hours.

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Bake the bread for around 30-35 minutes until deep golden brown on top. If you find the bread is browning too quickly, loosely cover it with aluminum foil. When you remove the bread from the pan and tap the bottom of it, it should sound hollow. The internal temperature of the loaf should be around 200°F/94°C.

Store leftover bread in an airtight container, or tightly wrapped, at room temperature for up to a week. Leftover milk bread makes amazing french toast!Join Our Newsletter And Receive Our Free Top 25 Recipes Book! Subscribe Tap here to receive our FREE top 25 recipe book!

Mastering the art of baking breads has been on my list of things to do for a very long time. While I dabbled in no-knead bread, crusty dinner rolls, and Portuguese rolls, I’d only ever baked bread casually, and decided that it was time to get serious and advance to an artisan loaf.

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Breakfasts usually consist of avocado toast or morning PB&J, and we often like to slice a few pieces for snacking on cheese and olives before dinnertime, so learning how to make sourdough bread just made sense.

Of experimenting in lockdown—and many mediocre or outright failed loaves—I finally got into the groove of making a very reliable and delicious artisan sourdough worth documenting.

Sourdough

I now make a loaf once a week with consistent quality! And we almost never need to go to bakeries, where bread quality and costs can vary.

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I will humbly say that I’m the only engineer of the family, so take it from me. I’ve made the mistakes and ran the numbers. And I’ve even attempted the shortcuts.

But now, I’ve finally nailed down the right formula, and this sourdough bread recipe is the result of a year’s worth of intensive lockdown bread baking!

Below, we’ve made a quick diagram of the different stages across the 1 1/2 days it’ll take to bake this bread. (As long as you have a sourdough starter ready to go. If not, see my guide on How to Make a Sourdough Starter!)

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The process on Day 1 does take about 10-12 hours (mostly inactive time), so we recommend starting your bread in the morning—probably no later than 12:00 noon!

Bread baking isn’t just about following instructions. It’s more of a hobby that requires time, attention, and love throughout the day, though the actual active time is relatively little.

This isn’t one of those no-knead bread recipes that have become popular over the last year. But in my opinion, when it comes to bread, a little extra effort and time means reaping big benefits.

Frieda

Overnight Sourdough Bread

Baking sourdough is a perfect background task when working from home or around the house, so you can bake any day of the week. If you can step away from work for a few minutes at a time over the course of a day and a half, baking sourdough may just be the perfect hobby for you.

If you, a family, or friend have a gluten intolerance (i.e. a digestive sensitivity to gluten…NOT a serious gluten allergy or Celiac Disease), you may find that sourdough bread does not result in adverse symptoms!

This is because sourdough naturally ferments for hours, allowing the yeast and bacteria in your sourdough starter to break down the gluten proteins in the flour. This in turn makes it easier to digest! Everyone is different, and some people may need their dough fermented longer than others. Read more about this phenomenon: “Why Some Gluten-Sensitive People Can Still Eat Sourdough Bread”

Easy Gluten Free Sourdough Bread Recipe

As always, consult your doctor before trying anything new, but we have a family member who has a gluten sensitivity and can eat our sourdough bread without issue. Cool, huh?

All that said, there are plenty of great recipes out there. I started with Claire Saffitz’s guide on How to Make Sourdough on NYT Cooking. It helped me gain hands-on experience, which is the only way to truly master bread baking—it definitely won’t be a slam dunk the first time.

It probably took me 5 or 6 loaves until I got what I thought was a perfect loaf and another 10 or more to get consistent results.

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There were some things that I noticed, adjusted, and tweaked over time with numerous iterations on flour types, starter volume, the mix of seeds to coat the outside of the loaf, and even the pattern of cuts on the dough before baking. I wanted to document my experience for family and our readers.

Sourdough

There are many styles and variations of sourdough bread out there. This is what I call an “everyday” sourdough loaf. It has great chew with an airy structure, a nice crispy crust, and a very light sourdough flavor that doesn’t hit you in the face! (If you want your bread to be more sour, you can cold ferment it longer, but we’ll get to that in the recipe.)

It’s great for sandwiches, any kind of toast, crostini, making breadcrumbs (if it’s gone stale!), and more. Take a look at the photos, and decide if this type of recipe

Easy Sourdough Discard Bread (no Knead!)