Japanese Style White Bread (Part 4)

After several iterations, I think we've settled on a recipe. This one is nice because we can do everything in the bread machine. However we have to add the more expensive vital wheat gluten to boost the gluten development.


Ingredients:

170g milk
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp vital wheat gluten (4 tsp)
271g bread flour
1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp yeast
2 1/3 Tbsp butter cut into small pieces

Directions:

Add all ingredients to your bread machine bowl in the order provided. This order is important. Adding the vital wheat to the milk first maximizes the gluten development via autolyse. Try to sprinkle the sugar and salt in a ring evenly around the edgest of the mound of flour.  Before adding yeast, make a little crater in the mound of dry ingredients and add the yeast into it. Collapse the sides of the crater in to cover the yeast with flour. Then evenly distribute the butter over the top of the mound. These steps ensure we get even distribution of ingredients which leads to a nice consistent texture of the bread.

Japanese Style White Bread (Take 3)

In my earlier posts I've been trying to make Japanese sandwich bread (aka Shokupan), namely trying to imitate one sold at Anderson bakery. This time I think I'm getting pretty close to what I want. Last time the texture wasn't quite right. It needed a bit more chew or tenacity when being pulled apart. This told me that I needed a bit more gluten development. I could achieve this in different ways: autolyse and/or adding higher protein flour (like Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat and Gluten Flour -- 22 oz). For this trial, I'm going to adapt a recipe from my bread machine for making "Milk Bread". The combination of milk and butter should soften the texture of the bread without causing it to lose its chewyness. I also decided to do only autolyse, since its expensive and doing an autolyse is essentially free. We also need to contend with how to incorporate the butter. Traditionally you don't add fat in the autolyse because that reduces gluten development. On the other hand, I tried added butter on top of the autolysed dough, hoping the machine would mix it in evenly. Unfortunately, that didn't work so well (I found small streaks of glossy dough in the bread). So this time I folded in small chunks of butter into the dough with about 4 folds. That seemed to work well without seriously affecting gluten development.

Autolyse:
271g bread flour
3/4 tsp yeast
170g milk


Mix the flour and yeast first in a large mixing bowl. Then add the milk and mix until it comes together in a shaggy mess.

Fold in butter:
 2 1/3 Tbsp butter

Cut up the butter into little cubes, I think I cut my cube of butter into 16 little cubes, but you could get by with less I guess. Just sprinkle a quarter of the cubes on top of the dough. Fold the dough over like a book and repeat until all the butter is gone. Don't try to work the dough at this point. We're just getting the butter chunks evenly distributed without mashing them into the dough.

Add the dough rest of the ingredients to the machine:

1 Tbsp bread flour
2 1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt

Add the dough to the bread machine dough. Sprinkle the remaining ingredients on top in the order provided. This additional flour will act as a buffer between the dough and the sugar/salt. Sugar and salt are very hydro-philic (water loving) so they will draw moisture out of the dough which will in turn dissolve the sugar and salt and get reabsorbed by the dough interfering with the autolyse.

Wait and start the machine:

Our machine automatically initiates a "rest" phase which we can count towards our autolyse period. Depending on your machine's rest period, you'll want to delay when you start the machine so that you get at least 30 minutes of autolyse. If your machine has a delay start timer, then you can use that.


Results/Conclusion:

This bread turned out pretty well. My wife thinks its good enough for her, but I want to see if I can eek out a little more chew. The version pictured below had one egg and more yeast so it rose all the way to the top of the machine. The egg gave a crunchier crust which I don't like for sandwich bread.

Japanese Style White Bread (Take 2)

In my last attempt my bread didn't really rise, which I think is a result of my use of really old yeast in a jar. My wife mentioned that the Anderson bread had a stronger "bread" flavor. This to me, means that I need to use a preferment like a poolish or a biga to really add that yeasty flavor to the dough.

Poolish:
100g bread flour 100ml lukewarm water  1/2 tsp yeast	Mix ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover with plastic. Let sit overnight at room temperature.
Water-Roux Paste:
20g bread flour 100ml water	Mix flour and water in a small saucepan. Cook over low to medium heat, stirring continuously until it reaches 65ºC. It should have thickened to a paste at this stage, that is when you stir you can see the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat, place a cling wrap over the paste and leave until lukewarm, or room temperature, before using. (Alternatively if you don’t have a thermometer, cook as before until it just starts to thicken, then continue to cook for about 1 more minute before removing from heat.) This water roux can be kept in an airtight container after cooling in the refrigerator for 1 day if not used immediately. However DO NOT USE if it turns grey in colour, that means it has gone bad.
For the Bread Dough:
50ml lukewarm water 30g butter, cubed Poolish Water-Roux Paste 250g bread flour 30g sugar 1 tsp salt 2 tsp instant dry yeast	Add all the ingredients to your bread machine in the order provided. As always, its best to make a little crater in the mound of flour and drop your yeast in there. Then set your machine to the white bread setting and start it.

Results
This recipe makes a bit too much for my Zojirushi BB-HAC10 Home Bakery 1-Pound-Loaf Programmable Mini Breadmaker. It almost overflowed the machine during the rise cycle so I ended dumping it into 2 loaf pans and baking them for 30min at 350F.

What about the bread?
Well, I could smell a bit of alcohol which might mean that I used too much yeast. It had larger bubbles and was more translucent than the Anderson bread. I also feel like the texture wasn't as springy as the Anderson version, tending to break instead of tearing apart. I think I'll try a different approach next time.