Hokkaido Floss Loaf

I made this again! Yes yes...the famous Hokkaido Milky Loaf. I had some leftover whipping cream which I had to use up in case before it turns sourish...it's such a pain whenever I had to buy large quantities of ingredients for certain bakes, requiring only a little of it and letting the rest gone to a waste after it turns bad. So, here I am, trying to perfect my skills with this great recipe again.

Please don't be deceived by the picture. The loaf looks really ugly on the surface, but the interior texture is the real substance. It was really superb! This was the most successful bread, in terms of texture - soft and really fluffy and delicious I had churned out so far. I'm so happy! I couldn't found the size of pullman loaf tin I wanted and had to make do with my regular loaf pan. The dough rose so high this time and even higher when it was baking, thus resulting in this irregularly risen loaf. The loaf rose very high up to the brim of the oven and almost touched the heating element. Luckily I had placed it at the lower third shelf. As usual, the top was a little burnt and I had to use an aluminium foil to cover it.


This time round, I was a little helpless with the sticky dough so I decided to use my handheld mixer with the dough hook to help me mix the dough together before kneading. I had not used the handheld mixer in bread making before as I thought it was not powerful enough. However after hooking for a while, the dough began to pull away from the sides of the bowl and the dough became smooth and more elastic. I took the dough out and kneaded for about 10 minutes. It had not passed the stretch test yet. I decided to hook it for a while more, about 10 minutes and I was happy that it became more stretchy! I kneaded for about another 5 minutes or so and tested it. It pulled away quite a distance without tearing! This is the best I had achieved so far! I had, in one of my chinese bread-making cookbook which says that when a kneaded bread dough is pulled apart until it tears, the tear should be able to form a nice rounded hole (instead of a an irregular hole), this would show that the stretch test is done.

I then carried on with the proofing, rounding and resting, and final proofing of the dough. (Please refer to my previous post for the recipe. It's entirely the same but I had it halved this time). I also added pork floss before rolling it into swiss roll style. I think I would roll the dough to make it thinner next time, so that I can achieve more swirls when the bread is sliced. I had forgotten to take close-up pictures of the fluffy texture but it was definitely softer than the previous attempt. :)

When I removed it from the pan, it was so soft that I feared having the bread being squeezed. I finally achieved to that extent! Yay! Hehe...

Able to savour my own freshly baked soft bread; and seeing others enjoying it makes me a happy girl...Hehe..My handheld mixer is not that 'useless' in bread making afterall. I'll probably incorporate it into my mixing and kneading next time. At least, it do saves me some time I guess...:)