First pic is most recent attempt, second pic is my old attempt. I finally got the soft, layered texture in the crumb. I used this recipe: https://halicopteraway.com/japanese-milk-bread-by-hand-no-milk-powder/
The problem really was the gluten development, but the solution wasn’t as straightforward. I don’t have a stand mixer and I knead everything by hand. The presence of sugar and especially butter in this dough really disrupts this. I had tried working my dough for extra long, but that didn’t help much.
Two big things improved the dough: 1) I switched to bread flour. I’ve started preferring AP flour in my sourdough, and in my hubris I thought I could achieve the needed gluten in all my breads with AP flour. But even after switching back to bread flour, the crumb was still not soft enough. So 2) I halved the amount of butter. The butter really seemed to be disrupting the gluten. After both of those changes, the crumb looked much better. I’m sure with a stand mixer, people could achieve a really nice crumb with the normal amount of butter. But by hand this already took me hours of kneading and autolyzing between steps.
by ThatPersianDude
3 Comments
congrats! that looks a lot better 🙂 how are you hand kneading it? have you tried slap and fold method?
another alternative is getting a hand mixer that has dough hooks. it’s cheaper than stand mixer and will be easier than hand kneading.
Em massas enriquecidas com gordura no caso dessa receita a manteiga, na mão ou em batedeira o ideal é desenvolver o glúten um pouco e somente após isso ir adicionando gordura, pois a gordura vai atrapalhar e muito o desenvolvimento do glúten.
Eu sofro bastante pra fazer pão de leite na mão também, o seu ficou lindo parece bem aveludada a massa, deu até fome 😄
Congrats! That new crumb looks amazing!