Hokkaido Milky Loaf 北海道牛奶土司

Famous milky bread from Japan, right here in New Zealand!

Last Sunday morning, the online bidder for our fridge finally came to collect her winning bid. Without a fridge, we had to clear our frozen food stuff. Fortunately there wasn't much frozen food in it as I started to control my buying since last week. Thankfully, we had a good friend, Cheng Ee's family staying just a few doors away that I could ask to store some of the frozen meat.

While emptying the freezer, I noticed there was a packet of flaky puff pastry with only 2 sheets of pastry left. Seeing that, I decided to finish off the pastry by making egg tarts for desserts. That Sunday night, hubby's friend Chen Ming and family offered to throw us farewell dinner at our house with Roast duck takeaways, these egg tarts would be perfect dessert to thank them in return.

To make egg tarts I needed to have fresh cream, which was the main ingredient for egg tart filling (you can check out my egg tarts recipe here). But the standard size of a small bottle of fresh cream here is 300ml which was too much to finish for the number of egg tarts that I was going to make with only 2 pastry sheets left. Considering no fridge to store the left over fresh cream, I had to consume this cream on the same day. Since I had to heat up the oven to bake egg tarts, I thought I might as well work on another baking recipe to use up the fresh cream.

I ended up having a real busy baking day instead of a relaxing Sunday. Thank god, the egg tarts turned out well too.


Portuguese Egg Tarts

When I was thinking hard what to bake using this fresh cream, it crossed my mind to give another attempt to make this Japanese milky loaf. I had tried to bake this recipe last year but it did not turn out well. The texture of the bread was not soft and fluffy as it should be but it was too dense. I suspected the dough was under kneaded at that time. I had shared this failure of bread making here.

This Tangzhong (Water Roux) recipe was again adapted from Christine's Recipes. The technique of kneading milky bread was not much different from other Tangzhong breads which I shared here.

The only variation was the ingredient of using fresh cream and milk in replacing water, which was why they called milky loaf. As the name suggested, this bread originated from Japan and the actual recipe used Hokkaido's Furano fresh milk which obviously was not available here. For this recipe, I used local fresh milk and cream instead, so maybe I should rename it to Kiwi Milky loaf instead J

I baked this loaf using a good quality bread pan, a gift from Cheng Ee. The loaf was beautifully baked and easily taken out from the tin.

Before glazing

After glazing with butter

That evening, I gave 2/3 of the loaf away to Cheng Ee and Chen Ming without tasting them. I was quite confident the bread tasted good, this was because when I sliced the bread, I felt the texture of the bread was just right - soft and fluffy.



Hokkaido Milky Loaf 北海道牛奶土司

 I only tasted the bread the following day. I was surprised to have hubby to be the first person to taste it. I was overjoyed when he told me the bread was awesomely good with strong milky flavor and nice to eat just like that. This comment was very encouraging to me especially from a non-bread eater. J

HOKKAIDO MILKY LOAF Featured in Group Recipes - 23/03/2011 Ingredients A 450 gm high grade flour (bread flour ) 75 gm caster sugar 5 gm salt 8 gm milk powder (optional) 10 gm instant dry yeast B 1 egg 50ml milk 50ml fresh cream 150 gm Tangzhong (refer here for making tanzhong, substitute water with milk) C 40 gm butter ( softened at room temperature) Method: Combine all dry ingredients: flour, salt, sugar and instant yeast in a bowl. Make a well in the center. Whisk and combine all wet ingredients: milk, egg and Tangzhong, then pour into the well of the dry ingredients. Knead until you get a dough shape and gluten has developed about 10-15 minutes (hand knead), and then knead in the butter. If you hand knead like I do, do expect to deal with gooey dough at this stage. You can opt for bread maker if you have one. Keep kneading until the dough is smooth, not sticky and elastic. The time of kneading depends on how hard and fast you knead. I used to set the timer to 15 minutes to monitor my kneading time. Test if the dough is ready by stretching the dough with two hands. If it forms a thin "membrane" that's very elastic in texture. That means you have successfully kneaded the dough to a perfect stage. If you use bread maker then add wet ingredients into bread maker first, then followed by the dry ingredients. The yeast is the last to add. Knead the dough into a ball shape. Place in a greased bowl and cover with a wet towel or cling wrap. Let it proof till it's doubled in size, about 2 hours. Use finger to test doneness. Poke in and if finger impression remains, this confirms the dough is nicely proofed. The time will vary and depends on the weather. The best temperature for proofing is 28C. You can place a cup of water in microwave and heat at high for 2 minutes to create a warm spot, once done then place the dough in to proof. Transfer to a clean floured surface. Deflate and divide the dough into three equal portions. Knead into ball shapes. Cover and let them rest for 15 minutes. Roll out each portion of the dough with a rolling pin into an oval shape. Fold 1/3 from top edge to the middle and press. Then fold 1/3 from bottom to the middle and press. Turn seal downward. Roll flat and stretch to about 30cm in length. With seal upward, roll into a cylinder. With seal facing down, place in the loaf tins to have the 2nd round of proofing. Brush whisked egg on surface of dough or lightly spray water on the shaped dough. Bake in a pre-heated 180C (356F) oven for 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer onto a wire rack and let cool completely. 北海道牛奶土司 这汤种面包法也是改编自我喜爱的美食博客基絲汀簡易食譜。牛奶味特别浓厚的超软土司，你会吃不停口！ 材料： A 450 克高筋粉 75 克糖 5 克盐 10克快速酵母（Instant Dry Yeast） 8克奶粉 (增加香味，可不加) B 60 克全蛋液 （一粒七号蛋） 50毫升牛奶 50毫鲜奶油/鲜忌廉 150 克汤种 (做法参考此食谱，汤种用牛奶替换水) C 40克牛油（奶油，置室温放软） (待面团起筋，即成团后，才加入) 做法： 面包机做法： 把所有材料（除牛油外）依次倒进面包机（先放湿的材料，然后才放干的材料）：牛奶，蛋，汤种，盐，糖，奶粉，高筋粉，最后放酵母。我习惯在面粉中央拨开一小洞，把酵母放进去。 选择面包机的basic功能，材料搞拌至成一面团，就放进已融解的牛油，继续搞拌，成一光滑面团。 测试面团搓到是否合格程度，面团可张开成一薄膜，而且坚韧即成。当面包机停机，等待面团第一次发酵完毕，见面团发大两倍就取出。 手搓麵粉做法： 把所有A&B材料放入一盘中，酵母不直接接触到盐和糖就可以，以免酵母脱水死亡。搞拌至成一面团, 搓成有弹性和筋膜的面团。要有心理准备，面团会很胶粘的坚持搓下去，搓至完全光滑大约15分钟。加入软化的牛油再搓15分钟有至弹性，面团可张开成一薄膜即成。跟着用保鲜膜盖好，作第一次发酵，至面团发大两倍约2个钟头。用手指测试，如果手指戳的印象仍然存在，这印证了面团发得很好。 放在清洁的工作台上，用手按压面团，挤出空气。切割成3个等份，滚圆，收口朝下。用保鲜膜盖着，静置15分钟。用木棍把每个小面团从中央向外滚成椭圆形。从上向下折1/3后，压紧。再从下往上折1/3后，压紧。将收口朝下，把面团上下压长，约30cm，翻面卷成圆柱形。收口朝下，放入面包模中进行最后发酵盖上保鲜膜或湿布进行最后发酵，至两倍大，约60分钟。 涂上蛋汁或轻轻喷一些水，放入预热至180C (356F) 的焗炉中，焗约25分钟，直至转金黄色为止。放在铁架上放凉，即成。