Hokkaido Milk Bread

Yipee!! I finally did it. I have been looking at this recipe from Angie's blog for so long, trying to decide if I can make this. This was actually not as hard as I thought it would be, and the outcome is wonderful!!! The bread is still soft three days after I made it, which is very surprising. I love the taste of this bread, so much better than just plain white bread and it's delicious toasted. This makes a great sandwich bread, but it's good enough to eat by itself. Here's the recipe.

Hokkaido milk bread
Angie’s Recipes

Ingredients

540g Bread flour
60g Cake flour
10g active yeast
30 g milk powder
80g sugar
9 g salt
1 egg
250 g Fresh milk
150 g heavy whipping cream

Mix all the ingredients in the bowl of an electric stand-mixer. Remember separate the yeast from salt and sugar to avoid the dehydration. Knead until gluten is fully developed and the dough is elastic, smooth, non-sticky and leave from sides of mixing bowl. Cover with a damp towel and allow the dough to ferment until double in size, about 60 minutes. Take out the dough and press out the gas produced during the proof. Divide it into 4 portions. Round up and let rest for about 20 minutes. Roll each dough out and roll up and place in a 13x33x12cm loaf pan. After shaping, let the dough rise up to 2/3 full. Brush with egg wash or milk. Bake in a preheated 170C/340F oven for about 40 minutes. Note: I never understood what they mean by separating the yeast from the salt and sugar when everything needs to be combined together. So what I did was put in the yeast first and the salt and sugar last..hopefully that's what she meant. My dough took a little longer to rise during the first proof, I waited for about an hour and a half. I didn't have a loaf pan like the one recommended in the recipe, so I used two regular size loaf pans and made two loafs. I wonder if it's necessary for the dough to be rolled into four different loaves...hm... I only baked the bread for 30 minutes.