Japanese Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Loaf

Hokkaido Milk Loaf is THE most classic/common/well-loved sandwich bread in Asia. It's enriched with milk, heavy cream, butter, egg, milk power, and quite a lot of sugar - which makes it richer than most Asian soft sandwich bread recipes, pushing toward brioche territory. The finished loaf is very tall, very soft, rather rich tasting. Found this recipe on line at "The Fresh Loaf" and it's a little time consuming (so plan ahead) but the end results are a high rising soft sandwich bread. Really hard to figure prep time as it's several steps over 2 days. So I'm just putting the time to mix it together in each step. Remember this is a LONG knead time in order to get that high rise

• Ready In: 1 hr 25 mins
• Serves: 8
• Yields: 1 loaf

Ingredients

• LEVAIN

• 13  g  sourdough starter
• 22  g milk
• 41  g bread flour

• FINAL DOUGH

• 203  g bread flour (I used half bread flour and half AP flour for a balance of chewiness and volume)
• 33  g sugar
• 10  g butter, softened
• 15  g powdered milk
• 38  g  egg whites
• 4  g salt
• 74  g milk
• 63  g heavy cream

Directions

1. LEVAIN:
2. Mix all and let fermentation at room temp (73F) for 12 hours.
3. FINAL DOUGH:
4. Mix all until stage 3 of windowpaneovernight.
5. 2. rise at room temp for 2 hours, punch down, put in fridge for overnight fermintation.
6. Takeout, divide, and place in pan, fits a pullman pan or 8X4 loaf tin,and rise at room temp for about 6 hours. For a pullman pan, it should be about 80% full; for US 8x4inch pan, it should be about one inch above the edge. The dough would have tripled by then, if it can't, your kneading is not enough.
7. Shape.
8. To shape divide dough into three parts, roll fairly thin, eliminating any air bubbles, then fold in sides and roll (photos included) place each roll in pan, allow to rest for up to 6 hours until doubled.
9. bake at 400F for 45min, brush with butter when warm.