Tangzhong Milkbread

In my search for new Japanese delicacies, I recently stumbled across yu-dane or the chinese Tangzhong. This is a method of making bread and pastries such as cinnamon rolls even more fluffy.

In German the whole unspectacularly Teigstück. Similar to roux, some of the flour and some of the liquid are boiled down beforehand and then added to the dough.

The resulting starch bond allows the bread or baked goods to absorb much more liquid/moisture later and to hold onto it during baking.

And I'm really excited about the result.

Duration: around 3.5 hours

Difficulty: easy

Makes: 1 loaf of bread

Ingredients:

Tangzhong

40g flour

180g (soy) milk, other plant-based milks should also work

Dough

200g warm (soy) milk

21g fresh yeast (1/2 cube)

65g sugar

525g flour

8g salt

50g aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas)

50g butter alternative

For the glaze

50g aquafaba

20g agave syrup or other syrup

Preparation:

In contrast to other bread doughs, we don't start with dissolving the yeast here, but with the Tangzhong.

To do this, weigh the flour together with the vegetable milk, I recommend soy, in a saucepan and then stir it into a smooth liquid.

Now heat the liquid to a medium level and don't forget to stir. From a certain heat on everything goes pretty fast and we don't want the starch to burn.

The whole thing now becomes a very thick cream / sauce / pudding. Then take the pot off the stove and let the Tangzhong cool down a bit. It will also become a little firmer.

Now that the step is checked, you can mix the yeast with the sugar and the remaining warm, not hot plant milk.

Then add the flour, the room temperature butter alternative, salt and the aquafaba. The aquafaba serves as a substitute for 2-3 eggs in the recipe. So if you don't want to open a can of chickpeas for the liquid in it and have another vegan egg alternative in stock, you can take that too.

Finally, the cooled Tangzhong is added. If it still has a little bit of residual heat, that's ok. But it shouldn't be hot anymore, otherwise it could kill the yeast.

Now knead the dough with a machine for about 8-10 minutes. It takes a lot longer by hand and you will probably need around 20-25 minutes. The dough will still be relatively moist and sticky at the end, but that is ultimately also wanted so that the starch has more liquid to absorb later during baking and the bread becomes extra fluffy.

If you absolutely cannot handle the dough, you can of course still add a little flour little by little until you get a smooth dough and can make a "gluten window". If you can separate a small part of the dough and pull it apart with your fingers until it becomes very thin, almost transparent like a "window", without tearing directly, then the gluten in the dough has developed well enough.

Then the dough can rise in a lightly greased bowl, covered, for 1-1.5 hours in a warm place until its volume has roughly doubled.

When the dough has risen, knead it again lightly so that it collapses again and divides it into four equal parts.

The individual dough pieces are then rolled out on a floured surface to form a rough oval, then the sides are folded in towards the middle and pressed down well.

The dough is then rolled up from one side into a small roulade.

When you have 4 small roulades, line a large loaf pan with baking paper and put your 4 pieces of dough in it.

They can then go again covered in a warm place for about 1 hour.

In the end, the dough should protrude from the loaf pan.

When the dough's rising time is almost up, you can preheat the oven to 175 ° C and mix a glaze.

I simply mixed some of the aquafaba with agave syrup so that the bread got a nice shine. Just before the bread was put in the oven, I brushed the mixture thinly on it.

Then the bread is baked for a total of 45 minutes.

After 20 minutes of baking, the bread has already got a pretty good color from above and I covered it lightly with some aluminum foil so that it doesn't get any darker.

After the bread is baked, take it out of the oven and while it is still really hot, brush it with a little more glaze.

Now let it cool down a little, for this you take it out of the loaf pan after about 10 minutes and then let it cool down completely on a wire grid.

And then your super fluffy bread is already ready.

I mean look at HOW fluffy it is

Then it doesn't really matter whether you use it to make peanut butter-jelly sandwiches or a hearty topping, e.g. with avocado, normal white bread cannot keep up with this bread. <3

Guten Appetit!

Allein schon die fluffige Krume. <3

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