Babes Bake Wool Bread

You read the title right...this bread is designed to look like rolls of yarn...thick yarn in my case. It's a fun bake brought to us by our wonderful kitchen of the month Judy at Judy's Gross Eats.

I guess this idea of shaping bread to look like wool has been going around the internet recently, but somehow I missed it. Still, I do love milk bread (although I substitute soy milk and non-dairy margarine for the dairy products) and Sweetie loves it even more. I wasn't actually sure if soy milk would work for this recipe but it does! The dough needed a bit more flour than the recipe called for but once it came together, the dough was easy to work with and it bakes up into fluffy, soft, tender, mildly milky rolls. I followed the King Arthur Baking Company recipe that Judy had given us except for those dairy substitutions.

I had some cinnamon sugar in the cupboard so it was easy to use it to fill the rolls after I had shaped them with a bench scraper and before I rolled them up. Be sure to go to Judy's blog to see the photos...it will help with your shaping. I used a cake pan and they fit perfectly.

Do consider becoming a Bread Baking Buddy...this is an easy and fun bake and delicious eating! It looks impressive, too, in case you have someone you want to impress with baked goods. To be a Buddy, just bake the recipe, take a photo, and send Judy an email with the photo and a brief description of your bake, plus a URL of your post if you have one. Sept. 29th is the deadline, so you have some time.

Be sure to visit the other Babes on their blogs to see what they have done with this fun bread. Thanks to Elizabeth for again making this lovely badge, as she does every month.

Wool Rolls Bread

Japanese Milk Bread recipe from King Arthur Baking Company

INGREDIENTS

Tangzhong

·                     3 tablespoons (43g) water

·                     3 tablespoons (43g) whole milk

·                     2 tablespoons (14g) King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour

Dough

·                     2 1/2 cups (298g) King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour

·                     2 tablespoons (14g) Baker's Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk

·                     1/4 cup (50g) sugar

·                     1 teaspoon (6g) salt

·                     1 tablespoon instant yeast

·                     1/2 cup (113g) whole milk

·                     1 large egg

·                     4 tablespoons (57g) unsalted butter, melted

INSTRUCTIONS

1.      To make the tangzhong: Combine all of the ingredients in a small saucepan, and whisk until no lumps remain.

2.      Place the saucepan over low heat and cook the mixture, whisking constantly, until thick and the whisk leaves lines on the bottom of the pan, about 3 to 5 minutes.

3.      Transfer the tangzhong to a small mixing bowl or measuring cup and let it cool to lukewarm.

4.      To make the dough: Weigh your flour; or measure it by gently spooning it into a cup, then sweeping off any excess. Combine the tangzhong with the remaining dough ingredients, then mix and knead — by mixer or bread machine — until a smooth, elastic dough forms; this could take almost 15 minutes in a stand mixer.

5.      Shape the dough into a ball, and let it rest in a lightly greased bowl, covered, for 60 to 90 minutes, until puffy but not necessarily doubled in bulk.

6.      Gently deflate the dough and divide it into four equal pieces; if you have a scale each piece will weigh between 170g and 175g.

7.      Flatten each piece of dough into a 5" x 8" rectangle, then fold the short ends in towards one another like a letter. Flatten the folded pieces into rectangles again (this time about 3" x 6") and, starting with a short end, roll them each into a 4" log.

8.      Place the logs in a row of four — seam side down and side by side — in a lightly greased 9" x 5" loaf pan.

9.      Cover the loaf and allow it to rest/rise for 40 to 50 minutes, until puffy.

10.  Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.

11.  To bake the bread: Brush the loaf with milk and bake it for 30 to 35 minutes, until it's golden brown on top and a digital thermometer inserted into the center reads at least 190°F.

12.  Remove the loaf from the oven and cool it in the pan until you can transfer it safely to a rack to cool completely.

13.  Store leftover bread, well wrapped, at cool room temperature for 5 to 7 days; freeze for longer storage.

Here are some notes from Judy:

There is some debate about the origins of Wool Roll Bread.  It was popularized by a Malaysian baker (Apron), but another blogger in Vietnam had demonstrated bánh mì cuộn len (which translates to wool roll bread).  It is also similar to some Middle Eastern and European breads.

 Basically, it’s a soft, pillowy yeast dough stuffed with a sweet or savory filling, then sliced, rolled and stacked in a round pan, so as the dough rises and bakes, the final result resembles rolls of wool or thick yarn.  My version is not stuffed, because I couldn’t decide on a filling, but please feel free to go wild.  Most of the bakers use the milk bread/tangzhong method for the yeast dough, but there are other versions, such as sourdough or egg-free (see other links below).  I used a basic tangzhong dough from King Arthur Baking Company.

 Technique is the key component.  Feel free to search the Internet for YouTube videos that show all the possibilities.  Here is my shaping technique:

 Prepare pan:  You can use a bundt pan, cake pan, or a springform pan, which is what I used.  I greased the bottom and sides, and added a layer of parchment, also greased, to the bottom.

Dough shaping:  Divide the dough into 5 pieces.  Roll each piece into a thin, oblong shape, then, using a sharp object (I used a wobbly pizza cutter), start about 2/3s from the designated top and make 1/8” to ¼” cuts.  

 If you’re using a filling, add it now.   

 Begin rolling from the solid top, ending at the bottom, and carefully place it in the prepared pan.  

 Let the dough rise, brush with milk or egg wash, then bake as directed in the recipe.  Let the bread cool if you can, then enjoy the process of eating it, strand by strand. 

Babes Bake Dreamy Milk Bread

Over the course of a number of recent years I've baked a lot of different breads, but our Kitchen of the Month, Karen of Karen's Kitchen Stories, challenged the Babes with a technique I had never tried. For Tangzhong Whole Wheat Bread, you start by cooking bread flour and water until it thickens up. Basically the starch is cooking. If you have ever thickened a gravy with a slurry of flour and water or with a mixture of butter and flour, the same thing happens...the heat causes the starch to cook and thicken the mixture.

Of course I'm still not sure why pre-cooking some of the starch should lead to a light, fluffy bread, but it does. I decided to use my dough to make pan rolls and they all rose beautifully and the resulting rolls were light and soft and slightly chewy with a good yeast taste and thin crust. I know this not because I have gone back to eating gluten-ful breads, sadly, especially ones with butter and milk in them, but because Sweetie agreed to taste them for me and give me feedback. He enjoyed them and said that they were not too sweet (which is good since I used half the sugar) and that he really liked the fluffy texture, but that it was still substantial when you were eating it; it didn't turn into a deflated pancake like balloon breads.

This is a pretty easy bread. It takes only minutes to make the tangzhong mixture. Then you let it cool to room temperature and make the bread. The recipe called for a couple of hours of refrigeration, but it doesn't really need that as long as you are making the bread the same day. If you decide to make rolls as I did, just divide the dough into pieces that weigh pretty much the same as each other for best results. Even though I made 12 rolls, they were still large rolls. Next time I might divide the dough in half and made two pans of eight roll per pan with the same amount of dough. The dough is a dream to work with as long as you knead it lots as the recipe calls for.

You are going to want to make these, so why not be a Buddy? Send Karen an e-mail with a short description of your experience baking this bread and a photo for the round-up. Bake and send the e-mail to her between now and October 29th. Hope you will bake with us!

If I make the Linky thing work correctly, you can click on photos at the end of the post for each Babe who adds  her link, so you can check out the awesome versions our Bread Baking Babes made this month.

If you were wondering what else is happening in my life I have to say, 'not much' because Sweetie came down with the flu at the beginning of the month and then I got it and am just starting to feel myself again. Lots of sleeping, reading books, staring at the TV, drinking cups of teas and that sort of boring thing.

Below is the original recipe Karen gave us. I used a 9-grain flour blend instead of whole wheat flour, reduced the sugar by half and shaped them as rolls and not loaves, plus skipped the refrigerator chilling, but otherwise followed the recipe.

Tangzhong Whole Wheat Bread

Tangzhong mixture (makes enough for two loaves)

50 g/1/3 C bread flour

1 C water

1.             Mix the flour and water together until there aren't any lumps.

2.             Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and registers 149 degrees F or 65 degrees C. If you don't have a thermometer (get one!), look for lines in the mixture made by your spoon as your stir. Remove from the heat immediately.

3.             Scrape the mixture into a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it onto the surface of the tangzhong. Let it cool, and then refrigerate it for several hours. 

4.             Bring it back to room temperature when you are ready to use it. 

This will last a couple of days. If it starts to turn gray, toss it. 

Whole Wheat Tangzhong Bread

Makes one loaf, and is easily doubled

110 grams milk

45 grams whisked eggs (about one large egg)

100 grams Tangzhong

40 g sugar

5 g salt

200 g bread flour

150 g whole wheat flour

6 g instant yeast

40 g unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into pieces

1.             Add all of the ingredients except the butter to the bowl of a stand mixer. You can also mix by hand or bread machine. 

2.             Mix the ingredients until they form a dough. Add the butter, one tablespoon at a time, until incorporated. Knead until the dough becomes very elastic. More is better.
 3        Place the dough into an oiled bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled, about 40 minutes I think you could also do a cold ferment overnight, but I haven't tried it.

4          Now for the shaping. 

5          Divide the dough into 3 or four equal pieces and form each piece into a ball.

6          With a rolling pin, roll each ball into a 10 inch long oval. Fold the oval into thirds, widthwise, like an envelope. Turn the envelope so that the short side is facing you, and roll it into a 10 to 12 inch length. Roll that piece like a cinnamon roll, with the folded sides on the inside, and place the piece in an oiled bread pan, seam side down. Repeat with the other pieces, placing them next to each other.

7          Cover and let rise for about 40 minutes, until about 4/5  the height of the bread pan. 

8          Bake in a 350 degree F oven for 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer the loaf from the pan to a wire rack and let cool completely.