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Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread with Tangzhong
Japanese Hokkaido milk bread is pillowy soft with light buttery flavor and a hint of sweetness. It’s versatile enough to work as a dinner roll, for use in sandwiches from PB&J to ham and mustard, as breakfast toast, or folded around a slab of ice cream as is popular in Singapore. The tangzhong method, where you make a roux of flour and milk or water, allows the dough to hold more moisture so the bread resists staling for days.
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Background
I originally made this bread using commercial yeast and I mostly followed a recipe from the blog Cleobuttera, but I rarely have milk powder in my pantry so I made some modifications to exclude it and still get a super soft bread. Here’s my Japanese Milk Bread (Yeast Version) if you’d like to try it.
I developed the sourdough milk bread recipe below to enhance the nutrition and add complex flavors in this bread. This article How Sourdough Bread is Helping People Eat Gluten Again discusses digestibility of sourdough, and this article Metabolic Profiling of Sourdough Fermented Wheat and Rye Bread has considerable information about positive nutrient changes due to sourdough fermentation.
More recently, Breadtopia community member Benny Chang has added a pillowy soft Whole Wheat Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread to our blog, which I recommend you also try. No matter which milk bread recipe you bake, you should check out Benny’s video instructions for shaping the loaves with lobes.
Process Challenges
When I was working on this recipe, I was excited to take on the challenge of getting a good Maillard reaction in an enriched sourdough. This is something I’ve had trouble with in the past, needing extra milk-egg washes to get browning on crusts of breads that contain a lot of fat and protein, which slow down fermentation.
For the first sourdough Hokkaido milk bread I made, I simply took out the yeast and added ripe sourdough starter at approximately 16% of the flour weight (100g sourdough starter for 630g flour). The bread was a modest success as I had to milk-wash it three times during the bake to induce even moderate browning, and it was a little less fluffy than my past yeast-leavened batches.
Regular sourdough starter 100% hydration
It then occurred to me that I should try to change the character of my sourdough starter, especially when I learned some people don’t have the same problem. I remembered doing a sweet stiff starter with a donut recipe from the blogger My Daily Sourdough Bread. So, I gave that a try and my bread browned nicely and was softer. I believe a sweet low hydration starter shifted the yeast and bacteria population of my sourdough starter a bit. You can read more about how that works in this forum thread.
Versatility
Here are a couple of photos of the final recipe version of the sourdough Hokkaido milk bread. The sliced bread was already a week old in that photograph and still soft.
I made cinnamon rolls with this dough (yeast version) as well. You can use this dough recipe for babka and also pair it with the infinite fillings: cinnamon and sugar, chocolate and tahini, strawberry and cream, walnut-cinnamon, date paste, sage, cinnamon and raisins.
Equipment
This recipe is easiest with a stand mixer and dough hook attachment, but I also give instructions on how to mix and build gluten by hand.
The total dough weight is about 1470 grams. You can scale it up or down as needed, but at this weight, it can be shaped to fit many different configurations, as well as being braided:
Two standard loaf pans
One long Pullman pan
One standard loaf pan and eight rolls in a 9″ round pan
Sixteen rolls in two 9″ round pans
Eighteen rolls in two 8″ square pans
Twenty-four rolls in two 9″ square pans
Eighteen rolls in a 9×13″ rectangular pan
Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread with Tangzhong
Sourdough Hokkaido milk bread is so fluffy with a buttery sweetness that's lighter than brioche but just as or more amazing. Milk bread is versatile enough to work as hambuger buns, a daily bread, or a dessert that's folded around ice cream as is popular in Singapore. The tangzhong method gelatinizes some of the flour, making the resulting bread extra soft and resistant to staling, and the slight tang from sourdough leavening adds complexity and interest.
Ingredients
Sweet Stiff Starter
Tangzhong
Final Dough
Pre-bake Wash
Post-bake Wash
Instructions
See the photo gallery below for process photos
Sweet Stiff Starter
Tangzhong
Dough Mixing and Bulk Fermentation (See the notes for hand-mixing instructions)
Shaping and Final Proof
Baking*
Notes
Instructions for Mixing and Kneading by Hand
Mix all of the ingredients except the softened butter in a bowl with a spatula, dough whisk, or by hand.
Let the dough rest 10 minutes, then transfer it to your countertop and slap and fold the dough. Begin adding 2 Tbsp of butter at a time, slapping and folding between butter additions until the butter is incorporated and the dough stays together.
Now follow the instructions above from when you transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl and start the bulk fermentation.
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Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread with Tangzhong