Soft like Cotton Sweet Corn Bread

I've not been baking sweet breads for some time so I decided to try my hands at one of the recipe from this popular chinese bread recipe cookbook - 孟老师的100道面包 which I've just acquired recently. This book boosts a collection of simple, easy-to-follow recipes with just the right proportion for home baking ovens without having to reduce the proportion of the recipes.

There are quite a number of recipes in this book using sponge starters. As i did not want to spend too much time on that day, I choose a relatively straight forward recipe with simple shaping method as well. Here goes, sweet corn bread! This recipe was originally a milk bread with sweet corns. I wanted the bread to have a more intense sweet corn flavour, resembling those sold in confectionaries or the Gardenia sweet corn loaf . I thought replacing the milk with cream of sweet corn soup instead should be fine, but I was afraid the soup would be too creamy for bread making. In the end, I came up with this idea of replacing with those instant campbell sweet corn soup, where you just need to add boiling water to a sachet and stir.

Guess what, the bread turned out to be so soft and fluffy like cotton! The dough was rather sticky to handle, but it was worth all the effort. :) Well, I guess the cream/milk had somehow contributed to its texture, just like in the hokkaido milk loaf recipe, which I recalled also having a very sticky texture.

Sweet Corn Bread

Ingredients:

• 200g bread flour
• 35g castor sugar
• 35g beaten eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3g instant yeast
• 100g instant creamy corn soup (Original recipe uses 100g milk)
• 15g unsalted butter
• 80g corn kernels, drained

Method:

1. Mix flour, sugar, salt, yeast and corn soup in a stand mixer and beat until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and is smooth and shiny.
2. Add butter and continue beating until dough is smooth, elastic and can be stretched to form an opaque thin film without breaking (passes the window pane test).
3. Add corn kernels and beat using slow speed to mix in the corn kernels.
4. Form dough into a ball, placed in a large mixing bowl and let proof for about 80 minutes.
5. Release the air, divide dough into five portions and round them into balls.
6. Placed rounded dough into a tube pan, spaced evenly and let it proof for another 40 minutes.
7. Glaze with egg wash, bake in preheated oven of 180°C for about 25 minutes.

Note: I used my breadmaker to knead the dough - Placed ingredients according to following sequence: corn soup, sugar, salt, eggs flour, yeast (just make sure to add in wet ingredients first, followed by dry ingredients, and yeast last, as you do not want the salt and yeast to come into contact). After 15 minutes, add in butter and finally corn kernels. I set to dough function and kneaded for 30 minutes.

Do drain the corn kernels well and pat dry it with paper towels.

Recipe Source: 孟老师的100道面包