A Japanese recipe using Chinese techniques filtered through an American company.
All the way back at the start of quarantine, I was one of many people who decided to bake some bread. And why not? I left my job to avoid the virus, and I had a lot of time on my hands. I tried a few different breads, but then I found a video on YouTube. Specifically, this video:
This bread turned out amazing. It’s light, it’s fluffy, it’s photogenic, and it was super tasty with a little jam. Unfortunately, since this was before I had decided to start a blog, I didn’t have a decent photography setup and I didn’t take a bunch of photos. Even then, it looked great:
![](https://flourandsunflowers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Polish_20200616_165924759-300x219.jpg)
In fact, this bread turning out great was part of why I decided to start this blog in the first place. I had originally intended to do a lot more baking, but turns out I’ve been making some big, delicious meals, and documenting them has been fun as well.
My partner kept bugging me to re-make this bread for the blog. I thought he just meant any milk bread, though, so I found a different recipe. Specifically this one, from King Arthur Baking. And, as part of my reviews section, I figured why not give it a review? I’m not going to reproduce the recipe here, since you can go see it on their site.
Making the Recipe
Making the recipe itself is easy. It’s a little odd if you’ve never made a bread like this before, though. You have to make a “starter” known as a Tangzhong first, which is basically just a roux of water, milk, and flour. You cook the roux a bit until it thickens and looks a bit like this. That Tangzhong is the Chinese element which has been adopted into Japanese cooking.
![](https://flourandsunflowers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PXL_20210121_175836184-1024x768.jpg)
You use the starter to make the dough, knead and ball it up, and let it rise, deflate, divide, and rise again. You end up with something a little like this:
![](https://flourandsunflowers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PXL_20210121_220319360-1024x768.jpg)
From there, you give them an egg wash and bake. King Arthur Baking recommends using a thermometer to probe the center and make sure it’s hot enough. The end result?
![](https://flourandsunflowers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PXL_20210121_225018481-1024x768.jpg)
My Verdict
One of the strange things about this recipe is that it calls for dry milk rather than, you know, just milk. I’ve never used dry milk before. I had to buy a huge sack of it too, even though I only needed two tablespoons of it, so I have plenty to do other things with. Honestly, I don’t know why it uses dry milk instead of normal milk, since the recipe I made the first time used normal milk and turned out just fine.
The dough as written in King Arthur Baking’s recipe was a bit too sticky, and I ended up needing to add almost a quarter cup more flour than it initially calls for. I’m used to needing to make adjustments like that, though, since a lot of it comes down to environmental factors like humidity. I almost always need to use a little more flour than a recipe calls for.
The egg wash made them very dark, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I recently found a post from The Spruce Eats about different kinds of wash, and I might try a different one next time to keep them a little lighter. Other than that, I was a little afraid they wouldn’t rise as much as they did, but once they baked they were puffy and fluffy and delicious.
![](https://flourandsunflowers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PXL_20210121_225121324-1024x768.jpg)
Overall, I don’t really have any major complaints about the recipe. I’m not too familiar with milk breads (I’ve only made them twice now and they both turned out great), so I don’t know how much I can tweak without something going wrong. I definitely think I want to make one again, maybe yet another recipe, and I want to experiment with adding some flavorings like brown sugar or cinnamon. They’re definitely a sweet white bread, so they take well to sweet things like jam, but they also work fine as rolls with a bit of butter.
If you try it too, let me know how you like it!