Milk Bread (Cotton Soft) - Milk Bread Recipe - Rasa Malaysia (2024)

FAQs

Why is my milk bread not fluffy? ›

If your milk bread is dense, mostly likely, the dough is under-kneaded. The dough needs to develop enough gluten to expand and become soft and fluffy. A sure way to ensure that the dough is kneaded enough is using the window pane test.

Milk bread was developed in Japan in the 20th century, using tangzhong, a warm flour-and-water paste traditionally used in China to make buns with a soft, springy texture and tiny air bubbles. Surprisingly, milk bread with an incomparable crumb and buttery taste is a snap to make at home, using supermarket ingredients.

What is milk bread's main difference from traditional bread? The only liquid used in milk bread is milk. In most yeast bread recipes, the liquid is usually water. There are also no eggs in most yeast breads.

To soften a stale loaf of bread, you need to heat it so that the starches will reabsorb the water. The thing to know is that this reabsorption starts to happen at about 131 F and continues up to around 185 F. The point is, you need a relatively low temperature to do it properly.

Lubricate With Oil. One of the easiest ways our bakers follow to make bread soft and fluffy is by using 1-2 tablespoons of lubricant/fats such as vegetable oil to wet the ingredients. This will prevent the formation of excess gluten, as excess gluten makes bread chewy.

Potato Flakes or Potato Water

Starch helps the dough by trapping the gas from the yeast in the dough and makes the bubbles stronger. This helps the bread to rise and be lighter and fluffier.

Other names for it are Hokkaido milk bread, shokupan, and pai bao. Shokupan translates to "eating bread" or "food bread" or "plain bread"; in Japan the style is considered the standard bread of the country, where it is a common breakfast meal or eaten as a snack. It is carried in many bakeries in Asian countries.

Health Benefits:

Introducing all new Zero Maida Milk Bread, a wholesome breakfast choice for everyone. Crafted with 100% whole wheat flour and enriched with essential fibres and calcium, it provides a nutritious start to the day, fueling you for all your adventures ahead.

Do milk and white breads have different nutritional values? Milk bread may have a slightly higher calorie content due to the addition of milk and possibly some added sugar. White bread is typically lower in fiber compared to whole wheat or whole grain breads.

Brioche is a much richer bread than Japanese milk bread. It uses a lot more butter than shokupan dough, giving brioche a sweeter and more buttery taste. Brioche is also made with eggs. This helps give brioche its signature golden color and a denser, chewier texture than shokupan.

How do you know when milk bread is done? ›

Give the bottom of the loaf a couple firm taps with your thumb. The bread will sound hollow when it's done. If you're new to this technique, try doing this every five minutes toward the end of baking and you'll hear how the sound changes.

The exact origin of milk breads is unclear. There is evidence from a British baker, Robert Clarke, that knowledge of milk bread in the United Kingdom dates back to 1862 and came from Japan, shortly after the isolationist country had been forced open to the rest of the world.

Brioche bread tends to be incredibly soft and tender due to its rich ingredients like butter and eggs. It's often praised for its delicate texture. Brioche is a French bread known for its rich, buttery flavor and a soft, tender crumb.

The spongy texture and moist flavor that oil creates can be a boon to certain recipes. Not to mention oil is cheaper and easier to work with. Butter will always provide superior flavor and that melt-in-your-mouth texture. In many recipes, combining the two gives the best of both worlds.

The chewiness of bread is due to the protein in the flour. High protein flour will give you chewy bread. Low protein flour will give you “cakey” bread. I make a dinner roll with milk, butter and eggs that is pillowy soft and yet a bit chewy too.

While underworked dough can simply be fixed by a little more kneading, severely overworked dough cannot be fixed. Instead, the overworked dough will result in a hard loaf that will likely not be eaten. It's important not to overwork your dough and continually check for overworking throughout the kneading process.

8 reasons why your bread dough is not rising:

Yeast should be stored in a cool, dry place. Yeast is too hot Yeast may have been dissolved in water that was too hot, or the liquid ingredients in the recipe may be too hot, causing the yeast to die. Yeast needs to be warm - not too hot, not too cold.

Add more yeast, blend in the starter, or knead in more flour to help initiate rising. Dough that has expired yeast, too much salt, all-purpose or cake flour, or antifungal spices like cinnamon might have trouble rising.