Wholemeal Hokkaido Milky Loaf

You may remember my attempt at Tangzhong bread, and the pictures of the loaf with three uneven low humps (yet looking totally shreddable). Not being adept at shaping irked me so much that I just had to bake another loaf of bread to practice.

This time, I chose a slightly different shreddable bread receipe, the Hokkaido Milky Loaf from Angie's Receipes, and modified it to make it nearly 100% wholemeal. (Her website has heaps of interesting receipes so do go over and take a look.) After mixing the dough and whilst letting it rest, I re-read the sections in Peter Reinhart's books on shaping.

Then, I performed the techniques on my ball of dough.

This is what it looked like at the start of the final rest before being bunged into the oven.

And voila!

A tall smooth loaf with lots of surface area. 

I did not attempt to take any "shreddable" pictures, but it was definitely shreddably soft, slightly sweet, and unbelievably hardly tasted like wholemeal.  This loaf of bread was the best loaf I had ever baked, both in terms of taste and looks. Thin toasted slices with a mound of melted butter on top - heaven. I could not resist having a few slices myself. And of course, mom enjoyed it too ;)

If I was going to bake wholemeal bread again, this would definitely be the receipe I would use.

Hokkaido Milky Loaf

Adapted from Angie's Receipes

Ingredients

540g finely ground wholemeal flour

60g cake flour

10g instant yeast

30g milk powder (optional)

80g caster sugar

9g salt

1 egg

250g fresh whole milk

200-250g heavy cream*

*Angie's Receipe calls for 150g heavy cream, but what happened was that whilst mixing the dough, it looked and felt too dry. At the bottom of my food processor were bits of flour that would not form up with the main ball of dough. Instead of adding more whole milk, I decided to use up my heavy cream, and poured in a bit at a time until the dough felt moist enough. Altogether I think I used around 200-250g of heavy cream, but you should start with 150g, then slowly add more till the dough feels tacky.

Method

1. Except for the yeast, mix all the ingredients. Once you get a ball of dough, add in the yeast and knead very thoroughly until the dough is smooth and you can perform the windowpane test. With wholemeal flour, it is very difficult to overknead, so do not be afraid.

2. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 60 minutes until double in size.

3. Take out the dough, press out the gas, do a few slap and folds, and let it rest in the covered bowl for 20 minutes.

4. Take out the dough and perform shaping. Then put it in your lightly oiled loaf pan and let it rest for another 20 minutes or so until the pan is 2/3 full. You can brush the top with eggwash or milk. And in the meantime, preheat your ove to 170 degrees C (340 degrees F).

5. Bake the loaf for about 40 minutes, then let it cool for about an hour before slicing.

Submitted to YeastSpotting