bread tutorial

Hokkaido Milk Bread

If you’re like me and like to look at bread photos for inspiration, you usually have a back log of breads that you drool over and want to try but for some reason or another haven’t yet had a chance to make. Either because you kind of forget about it when it’s time to bake or because the recipe looks more complicated than the energy that you have for the project.

This milk bread is one of those for me. It uses a Japanese method called tangzhong to make the final product extra fluffy because the result of the tangzhong is that you can make a bread which is more moist and therefore extra spongy.

This bread sounds mythical and exotic, doesn’t it? Hokkaido is Japan’s second largest island and its capital is Sapporo, maker of the famous Japanese beer and host to the Olympics of 1972. The Japanese milk bread became quite popular in the 19th century when the government encouraged citizens to use and drink local milk to support the farmers. Creative bakers seized the opportunity and created this now famous bread from Hokkaido that is known for it’s supple texture and fluffy characteristics.

The thing about this particular loaf of bread is how easy and versatile it really is to make. The tangzhong takes about 3 minutes to make and the bread can be made in to a loaf like I made it or you could make it in to rolls and maybe even other exotic shapes. The thing is that it’s really fun to work with and is a super fluffy bread.

The recipe

Hokkaido Milk Bread

This Japanese milk bread is soft, fluffy, and delicious!

Tangzhong

3/4 Cup Milk
1/4 Cup Flour

Dough

500 Grams King Arthur AP Flour
3 Tbsp Sugar
1 Tbsp Salt
15 Grams Milk Powder
1 Tbsp yeast
1/2 Stick Butter
2 Whole Eggs
1/2 Cup Milk

Egg Wash

1 Whole Egg

Making the Tangzhong

This step is fairly simple but after you’re done, it’ll need about 15 minutes to cool so now would be a good time to warm up about 1/2 cup of milk and your yeast to let it wake and bloom.

In a pan over medium heat, add milk and flour. Combine until the mixture thickens and becomes gelatinous. Remove from heat and let cool.

The mixture should resemble a roux and should only take a minute or so to get done.

Making the Milk Bread Dough

In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar.

Add the dry ingredients, then the tangzhong, then the eggs. Mix at low speed until combined and start adding the milk a little at a time until it’s all incorporated.

As the dough begins to come together, slowly add the milk a little bit at a time and increase the speed of your mixer to the second speed. The dough should be fairly sticky but should clean the sides of the bowl as it’s being mixed.

I mixed mine for about 15 minutes before it was ready so don’t despair if it looks too wet!

Form the dough in to a ball and cover the bowl of the mixer with plastic to keep the dough moist and prevent a dry skin from developing on the dough.

Let it rest for about an hour or so until it doubles in size.

Once doubled, dump it out on to a floured surface and divide the dough in to 4 pieces.

Roll each piece in to a ball and put in a greased baking pan. Cover lightly with plastic for another hour or so until the balls have risen nicely, roughly doubled again.

The Hokkaido bread dough balls before and after rising

Preheat your oven to 450˚F about halfway through.

Beat the eggs and wash over the dough before putting the loaf in the top rack of the oven to bake.

About 15 minutes in, turn the loaf and move to the lower rack.

At this time, lower the temperature to 400˚F.

20 minutes later, remove from the oven and let cool before enjoying!

hokkaido milk bread out of the oven fresh

For your reference, all of the equipment used for making this loaf are listed below. I

23.10.18 By nick Leave a Comment

Bread with Yeasted Water

There are many ways to make bread. From slow sourdough breads that can take a few days from the time you mix to the time you bake to biscuits that can be mixed and cooked within a few moments, the variety of leavening agents available for the home baker are quite diverse.

By far the most popular method that folks use to bake bread at home is with store bought yeast. Just cut open the little bag and add to your mixing bowl and the dough will “double in size” in fairly short order. From there the baker shapes the dough, lets it rest for a little longer, and off it goes in to the oven for a tasty bread in half an hour.

One of the lesser known ways of making bread is by using yeasted water. Yeasted water is the result of adding something that has a little bit of fruit to a jar, and topping it off with water before sealing the jar and waiting for a few days. I first read about this baking method from this post a few years ago. Being the curious cat that I am, I researched a bit and found very little online at the time but decided to take the post’s words as truth and baked one of my first breads with “leavened water” that I made from plums. You can read the post and get a glimpse of the process but I’ll detail it here again for you. One thing that I think I omitted to say on the original post is that you should make your jar as full of water as possible in order to leave as much air as possible out of the jar. The air could cause your infusion to grow mold. This happened to me once and am sure is fairly common given that you want to generally keep these infusions in a warm area for a while.

So since fall is here it means that our local fruit farm had an abundance of prune plums, which are by far my favorite type of plum, so we bought an unnecessarily large amount. We sure had our fill for the season! I also made some plum jam and decided to make this infused yeasted water bread again with the last few plums of the year. You certainly don’t need to use plums for this, so look around your kitchen and get creative! You can use just about any fruit you want to use. Apples and raisins are other good fruits to use but use your imagination and give it a go.

The first step is to wash you jar and your plum really well. From there all you have to do is put the plums in the jar and fill the jar to the top with water before tightening the lid. Now place your creation somewhere it can be left alone for a few days, but nowhere you could forget about because if you do, the gas that gets built up in the jar could cause the jar to explode and thus remind you of where you had left it!

Check in on your infusion once a day so you can observe how things change but the you’ll know the mixture is ready when there are bubbles at the top of the jar.

If you are not ready to bake when the infusion is ready, you can put it in the fridge for a few days but note that this will increase the amount of time it takes for the bread to proof and may require a little bit of “spiking” with regular yeast. I put my infusion in the fridge for a couple of days this time and didn’t notice much of a slowdown but your mileage may vary.

When you do decide to bake, substitute the water in your formula for your infused yeast water and don’t add any yeast. Mix it all together and watch the magic happen. If after a few hours you don’t see any growth in your dough or it’s really slow, don’t hesitate to add a little bit of yeast to your dough and knead it again for a bit to incorporate everything. There’s no shame in that, you’ll still get the subtle aroma of the fruit and your results will be great!

Yeasted Plum Water Bread Recipe

500 grams King Arthur All-Purpose flour
335 ml yeasted plum water
22 grams salt
22 grams sugar

In a medium bowl add your flour, salt, and sugar then add the water. Mix to combine and cover. Using more or less a sourdough method, check in on the dough after half and hour and do a stretch and fold. Do a stretch and fold every half hour or so if your dough is slow to rise. If it’s rising quickly just one of two folds until it can pass the windowpane test easily will suffice.

Once it’s grown and nearly doubled, turn on to a floured surface and pre-shape your loaf to your desired final shape. Put in to a proofing basket and proof for an hour or so at room temperature or in the fridge overnight.

Pre-heat your oven to 500˚F and once ready, score your loaf and load it in the oven before turning the oven down to 450˚F. If you’re using a cloche like I did, bake it with the lid on for 15 minutes and finish baking without the lid, another 15 minutes or so.

Remove the loaf from the oven and let cool before enjoying.

Check out the full video of the process below. If you have any questions leave a comment on YouTube and make sure to subscribe to the channel!

All of the gear that I used to make the bread is listed below:

13.01.17 By nick Leave a Comment

How to Make a Sourdough Starter From Scratch: Day 2

In the previous video, I showed you how to “start” your sourdough culture. In today’s video, I’ll show you how to clean and feed your culture. By this time tomorrow, your culture should start showing more signs of life by having bubbles and becoming more airy!

Presently your culture shouldn’t look too different than it did yesterday. It may have a hint of a sour odor, it may have released a little bit of water, and it may also look exactly the same. There are variables to its behavior, namely flour type, contents in your water, and temperature at which it was kept.

15.12.16 By nick Leave a Comment

How to make good bread? Practice!

As this year starts to wind down, I wanted to share with you a quick picture to encourage you to keep baking and never stop experimenting!

Not all of my bakes are home runs, not all of them are delicious, and certainly not all of them are blog worthy! I probably experiment with my baking more than most and the picture above proves it.

Here are a few of my key takeaways for this year:

Keep a baking journal. I started doing this last year to keep track of my bakes, especially if I’m trying out a new formula or using new ingredients. This can be on your phone/tablet like the ones on black friday 2022, or a text document on your computer, or even the old fashioned spiral bound notebook. Whatever it is, use it! It helps you look back after a bake and critique yourself. Should you have let the dough proof longer? Note it! Should you have used less yeast? More water? More salt? Note it down and try again with your new ideas!
Pay attention to the temperature. After you’re done mixing your dough, take a probe thermometer and note down the final dough temperature (FDT). Next time you bake, use colder water and see that it will take longer for the dough to proof. Then the time after that, use warmer water to see that the dough proofs faster. Find a temperature that fits your schedule and run with it.
Preheat your oven. I usually time my bakes so that I’m loading the loaves in the oven after the kids have gone to bed and I’ve had a chance to finish up my to-do’s. This ends up being around 9pm. Sometimes I get a late start and it’s tempting to put the bread in the oven before it’s fully ready. This compromises the final product and all the effort you put in to making the bread. Always preheat your oven and make sure things are good and stable! Visit appliancehunter.co.uk for oven recommendations. If your oven is drafty like mine, use a dutch oven or a le cloche to provide a more stable environment for the bread. This is what they usually use at a bakery.
Have fun! By far the biggest reason why I bake is because I think it’s so fun to just make something so delicious at home. Next time you’ve loaded your loaves in the oven, wait 10 minutes and step outside for 5 minutes. Come back in your house and smell that delicious bakery smell right in your own home. You’ll be amazed, surprised, and even encouraged to keep at it. Get dirty, make bread, and have fun!

7.10.16 By nick Leave a Comment

Infused Yeast Water Bread

Fall is here and one of my favorite end-of-summer/start-of-fall fruits is the prune plum. I was always a plum fan but what really makes me love them is the fun memories they bring back. One day while visiting family in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood I noticed how there were plum trees everywhere! My daughter was 3 at the time and we went out for an evening stroll when all of the sudden, a plum fell right on her head! Oh how we laughed at that! She ate that plum and we picked a few more along our route to be sure. We bonded over plums and I guess I’ve always loved them even more since that day.

Now that season is here again and I bought a huge quantity at our local fruit farm. Try as we might to eat them all, we weren’t able to. We even gave a third to our neighbors and still had some left over after 2 weeks! So, instead of baking a pie (which I really wanted to do!) I decided to make some yeasted water with the plums to try to make bread. I also harvested several seeds and will try to plant plum trees in our yard. If anyone has any insight on planting plum trees from seeds, connect with me via Facebook!

If you’ve never heard of yeasted water, it’s kind of magical. You get a mason jar, fill it with about 2/3 water, and add your fruit of choice to the water. I just pitted about 3 plums and lightly smooshed them in the jar. I then put the lid on tightly and put the jar in a cool darkish place for a week.

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Checking on it every few days I could see the magic start to happen. Bubbles were forming and I took the sniff test each time to make note of the sweet smell and to hear the bubbles fizz. After a week’s time the plums had all floated to the surface and the water had gone from clear to “plum” color – a beautiful dark rose/light purple hue. It also smelled very sweet. I almost took a swig to taste it but decided to save every drop for a double batch of bread.

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So, “how do you use yeast water to make bread?” you may ask. It’s really quite simple. Instead of adding any yeast, you just use the water. Does it work? You betcha! I got my inspiration from this post about a year ago and tried it, and have used this method a few times since. The tricky part is figuring out how much water to use in order to replace your yeast. Since I didn’t want it to fail I used all of the water and cheated by spiking the bread with just 1 gram of yeast. Turns out I really didn’t need this extra yeast as the dough was super active after a few hours on the bench.

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Process

Weigh the flour and add to a large mixing bowl
Add the other dry ingredients to the mix
Add the water to the mix, removing the fruit while doing so. You could probably leave it in but I didn’t want chunks in these breads.
Mix by hand or mixer until the dough mass just comes together. Cover with a lid and let sit for 30 minutes.
Mix by hand for another 5 minutes, and cover again for about 30 minutes.
Do 4 stretch and folds at 30 minute intervals. At the end of this cycle I saw bubbles indicating that the yeast was thriving and helping the bread to rise. My dough was really wonderful to work with at this point.
Let it sit and rest for about another 90 minutes.
After the dough has risen nicely, dump it out on a floured surface and divide in two. Pre-shape in to balls and let them rest for 5-10 minutes.
Shape your dough as desired and place in to proofing baskets.
Final proof for about an hour.
Put your bread cloche in the oven and pre-heat it to 425˚F.
Cut off a piece of parchment paper and put it on your baking peel. With oven gloves, carefully slide the bread in to the cloche and cover with the lid.
Bake with the lid for 15 minutes and remove it.
Bake the bread for another 15-20 minutes and remove once the bread is done.
Let it cool and enjoy!