Hokkaido Milk Bread

This is a super soft bread. It's softer than anything I've ever seen in a supermarket. It's a sweeter relative of Shokupan.

This is identical to the recipe by the NY Times' cooking section, but without a stand mixer.

This produces roughly 240ml (1 cup) of tangzhong.

• 45g bread flour.
• 120ml whole milk.
• 120ml water.

This produces 1 loaf (in a 9×5-inch loaf tin).

• 325g bread flour.
• 60g sugar.
• 7g active dry yeast (i.e. 1 packet)
• 1 tsp (4g) salt.
• 1 egg.
• 120ml whole milk (plus extra for brushing)
• 60g unsalted butter (plus extra for buttering)
• 120ml (half a cup) tangzhong.

1. In a smallish pan, whisk the flour, water and milk together until smooth with no lumps.
2. Bring to a simmer over a medium-low heat, stirring often. The mixture should become quite thick when cooked, like a more extreme custard.
3. Once the spoon leaves tracks in the mixture, you can pour it out into a cup/jug and leave it to cool to room temperature.

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients just until evenly combined.

   I've heard it be recommended that the salt isn't added at this stage. Seemed to work fine for me though.
2. Add the egg, milk, and 120ml (half a cup) of tangzhong. I mixed them together (not thoroughly) in a jug first.
3. Mix together with a spoon until you get one dough ball.
4. Without flouring your work surface, use stretch-and-fold (or slap-and-fold) to knead the dough for around 10 minutes. I suppose this step could also be performed in the bowl.
5. I kneaded for about 15-20 minutes here using stretch-and-fold, until the dough stuck to itself more than me, and looked nice and smooth. NYT said “until the dough is smooth and springy and just a bit tacky”.
6. Place the dough into a lightly buttered bowl and cover. Leave to rise 2x (40-60 minutes in warm weather)
7. Punch the dough down and cut it in half. Form each half into a ball, then cover and leave for ~15-20 minutes.
8. Butter a 9×5 loaf tin. Gently roll out the dough balls into an oval, about 15x30cm.
9. Fold the top and bottom 5cm of the ovals in to make a square. I folded them to get the 30cm dimension down to about the 5 inches of the loaf tin.
10. Roll along the 15cm dimension to make a super fat log.
11. Place each log at the far ends of the loaf tin, parallel to the short side. Put them seam-side down!
12. Cover and rest for another 40 minutes, until the tops of the logs are over the top of the tin and the middles are touching. Your final loaf will be very similarly shaped so make sure you're happy with how much they've risen!
13. Preheat the oven to around 175°C. Use it on non-convection (this stops the milk evaporating too quickly!)
14. Brush heavily with milk (I practically soak the loaves), and bake on the lowest oven shelf until they look good, about 35 minutes. They should look a nice deep golden brown, just on the brink of “overdone”.
15. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, followed by an hour on a wire rack.
16. Don't cut into the loaf before it's cooled for an hour! It will deflate.