Ever since I received a preloved Zojirushi bread machine, I have been baking homemade bread regularly. The bread machine is very compact and as it doesn't take up too much space I have left it permanently at the corner of the kitchen counter. With it so visibly in sight, I am constantly reminded to bake a loaf of bread every other day.
I have lost count of the number of times I have baked this milk loaf. As long as there is fresh milk in the fridge, this is the bread to make. The recipe is from a bread machine cookbook by a Japanese author (荻山和也╳cuoca用麵包機烘焙專業級麵包) and I will be trying out a few other recipes soon.
This milk loaf recipe uses the most basic ingredients: bread flour, milk, sugar, butter, salt and yeast. It has a very high liquid to flour ratio, at 80%. That is, for 500g of flour, it will need 400g of milk. The usual liquid to flour ratio for most handmade bread ranges from 60% to 70%. The dough is quite wet and at first I thought it may not even come together to form a dough. After the kneading cycle which is about 20mins for my bread machine, the ingredients came together and a slack and sticky dough was formed. Nevertheless, it survived the next three cycles of rising with two auto stir down (or the common term 'punch down' by the kneading blade) in between. The dough became smooth and rose well before the machine went into the baking cycle.
Basic White Bread
The texture of this bread is very soft and fluffy. The bread stays soft for 2 days (kept in air tight container) but I am not sure whether it would remain soft for 3 days as my family finishes the loaf within 2 days. The texture is slightly different from bread loaf made with tangzhong method. This one using straight dough method doesn't have the slight chewy texture as compared to the tangzhong method.
I have also tried using the bread machine's dough function to just knead and proof the dough but used the oven to bake the bread. With the exact same amount of ingredients, the dough was able to fill up my pullman tin. With only 20 mins of kneading by the bread maker, the dough was not able to reach the window pane stage. However, to my delight, the texture of the finished pullman loaf was just as good!
The bread tastes good with just the right sweetness. It can be eaten plain on its own especially when freshly baked. Besides the bread machine wholemeal loaf, this is another regular everyday bread which we won't get tired of having it for breakfast everyday!My mom gave me a beast of a Zojirushi bread machine that she no longer planned on using. I had been making bread by hand at home, and this was a welcome change. One of the breads that I could never make quite right is Hokkaido Milk Bread–a sweet, buttery white bread that’s a staple at most Asian bakeries. No matter how I did it, the crumb would always come out denser and cake-like, and I thought perhaps a bread machine would fix that problem.
Salt Free White Bread
It did not, in fact, fix that issue, much to my immense frustration. I tried different ratios of things, wondering if it was an the salt killing the yeast or if the milk needs to be heated, less butter, more butter, I scoured the internet for the recipes trying to figure out exactly what I was doing differently than all those blogs with beautiful, pull apart bread. I thought maybe I wasn’t doing the Tanzhong (flour roux) correctly. I tried all sorts of things, failed bread after failed bread. They were delicious, and didn’t go to waste, but they weren’t what I was after. Even if they were springy while warm, they quickly cooled to a crumbly consistency.
After researching gluten formation, I realized that the milk, butter, and sugar component of the bread that gave it its signature flavor was interfering with the bread’s ability to form gluten! It truly was an AHA! moment. The fats from the milk and butter prevents the proteins from making the long sticky strands, and the sugar competes with the flour (and wins) for the water. Most of the recipes called for putting the ingredients together, even the recipe booklet that came with the bread machine–but I realized in order to get the fluffy, pull apart texture, I needed to allow the gluten to form first.
The texture of this bread is very soft and fluffy. The bread stays soft for 2 days (kept in air tight container) but I am not sure whether it would remain soft for 3 days as my family finishes the loaf within 2 days. The texture is slightly different from bread loaf made with tangzhong method. This one using straight dough method doesn't have the slight chewy texture as compared to the tangzhong method.
I have also tried using the bread machine's dough function to just knead and proof the dough but used the oven to bake the bread. With the exact same amount of ingredients, the dough was able to fill up my pullman tin. With only 20 mins of kneading by the bread maker, the dough was not able to reach the window pane stage. However, to my delight, the texture of the finished pullman loaf was just as good!
The bread tastes good with just the right sweetness. It can be eaten plain on its own especially when freshly baked. Besides the bread machine wholemeal loaf, this is another regular everyday bread which we won't get tired of having it for breakfast everyday!My mom gave me a beast of a Zojirushi bread machine that she no longer planned on using. I had been making bread by hand at home, and this was a welcome change. One of the breads that I could never make quite right is Hokkaido Milk Bread–a sweet, buttery white bread that’s a staple at most Asian bakeries. No matter how I did it, the crumb would always come out denser and cake-like, and I thought perhaps a bread machine would fix that problem.
Salt Free White Bread
It did not, in fact, fix that issue, much to my immense frustration. I tried different ratios of things, wondering if it was an the salt killing the yeast or if the milk needs to be heated, less butter, more butter, I scoured the internet for the recipes trying to figure out exactly what I was doing differently than all those blogs with beautiful, pull apart bread. I thought maybe I wasn’t doing the Tanzhong (flour roux) correctly. I tried all sorts of things, failed bread after failed bread. They were delicious, and didn’t go to waste, but they weren’t what I was after. Even if they were springy while warm, they quickly cooled to a crumbly consistency.
After researching gluten formation, I realized that the milk, butter, and sugar component of the bread that gave it its signature flavor was interfering with the bread’s ability to form gluten! It truly was an AHA! moment. The fats from the milk and butter prevents the proteins from making the long sticky strands, and the sugar competes with the flour (and wins) for the water. Most of the recipes called for putting the ingredients together, even the recipe booklet that came with the bread machine–but I realized in order to get the fluffy, pull apart texture, I needed to allow the gluten to form first.
The texture of this bread is very soft and fluffy. The bread stays soft for 2 days (kept in air tight container) but I am not sure whether it would remain soft for 3 days as my family finishes the loaf within 2 days. The texture is slightly different from bread loaf made with tangzhong method. This one using straight dough method doesn't have the slight chewy texture as compared to the tangzhong method.
I have also tried using the bread machine's dough function to just knead and proof the dough but used the oven to bake the bread. With the exact same amount of ingredients, the dough was able to fill up my pullman tin. With only 20 mins of kneading by the bread maker, the dough was not able to reach the window pane stage. However, to my delight, the texture of the finished pullman loaf was just as good!
The bread tastes good with just the right sweetness. It can be eaten plain on its own especially when freshly baked. Besides the bread machine wholemeal loaf, this is another regular everyday bread which we won't get tired of having it for breakfast everyday!My mom gave me a beast of a Zojirushi bread machine that she no longer planned on using. I had been making bread by hand at home, and this was a welcome change. One of the breads that I could never make quite right is Hokkaido Milk Bread–a sweet, buttery white bread that’s a staple at most Asian bakeries. No matter how I did it, the crumb would always come out denser and cake-like, and I thought perhaps a bread machine would fix that problem.
Salt Free White Bread
It did not, in fact, fix that issue, much to my immense frustration. I tried different ratios of things, wondering if it was an the salt killing the yeast or if the milk needs to be heated, less butter, more butter, I scoured the internet for the recipes trying to figure out exactly what I was doing differently than all those blogs with beautiful, pull apart bread. I thought maybe I wasn’t doing the Tanzhong (flour roux) correctly. I tried all sorts of things, failed bread after failed bread. They were delicious, and didn’t go to waste, but they weren’t what I was after. Even if they were springy while warm, they quickly cooled to a crumbly consistency.
After researching gluten formation, I realized that the milk, butter, and sugar component of the bread that gave it its signature flavor was interfering with the bread’s ability to form gluten! It truly was an AHA! moment. The fats from the milk and butter prevents the proteins from making the long sticky strands, and the sugar competes with the flour (and wins) for the water. Most of the recipes called for putting the ingredients together, even the recipe booklet that came with the bread machine–but I realized in order to get the fluffy, pull apart texture, I needed to allow the gluten to form first.
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