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

After seeing how much my wife was spending on  "premium white" bread from Anderson Bakery ($7/loaf), I decided it was time to start making it at home. After all, my wife was the one who insisted we get a bread machine years ago because we were spending so much at the bakery.  As I predicted, after a couple of tries, she eventually found it too much work and never quite made the same type of bread she was used to, never using the machine again. I figured, that I had to put our bread machine investment to work and come up with an easy "premium white" recipe that we can make in the machine.

Here is a recipe I found
https://cornercafe.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/japanese-style-white-bread-loaf/

The secret here is the water-roux paste which supposedly gelatinizes the starch in the flour allowing more liquid to be absorbed into the bread.

This is my adaptation for use in a bread machine. The first step is creating the roux paste since you'll want that to cool down while prepping the other ingredients.

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:
150ml lukewarm water 30g butter, cubed Water-Roux Paste (see above) 1 Tbsp milk powder 350g bread flour 30g sugar 5g (1 tsp) salt 7g (2.5 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?
I have to say that my 1+ yr old yeast isn't good anymore, so the first loaf turned out pretty dense. I'll have to try this again with some fresh yeast.

h