Snacks & Baking
Milk Bread 우유식빵
The reason this loaf pulls apart in strands instead of crumbs is a spoonful of flour cooked into milk first. It takes four minutes and it is the whole difference between this and ordinary white bread.
- Serves
- 1 loaf
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 35 min
Ingredients
Starter
- 20g bread flour
- 100ml milk
Dough
- 320g bread flour
- 40g sugar
- 5g salt
- 5g instant yeast
- 120ml milk, warm
- 1 egg
- 40g butter, softened
To finish
- 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tbsp milk
Method
- Whisk the starter flour and milk in a small pan over medium heat, stirring constantly. In about four minutes it will thicken into a paste you can draw a line through. Scrape it into the mixing bowl and let it cool until it is only just warm.
- Add the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, warm milk and egg. Mix to a shaggy dough, then knead for 10 minutes. It will be sticky and you should resist adding flour.
- Work in the softened butter a little at a time. The dough will come apart and look wrong, then come back together smooth and glossy. Knead another 5 minutes until it stretches thin without tearing.
- Cover and prove until doubled, about an hour in a warm kitchen.
- Knock the dough back and divide into three. Roll each piece flat, fold the sides in, then roll up into a short log. Sit the three logs side by side in a greased loaf tin.
- Prove again until the dough rises just above the rim of the tin, about 45 minutes. Heat the oven to 180C.
- Brush the top with the egg wash and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until deep gold. Tip it out of the tin straight away and cool on a rack.
Slicing it hot is a mistake everyone makes once. The crumb is still setting for the first hour and a warm loaf tears rather than cuts.
It stales faster than shop bread because there is nothing in it to stop that. Day two is for toast, and day three is for the best French toast you will make.