Chinese Milk Bread

This bread is deliciously soft and pillowy! I was so impressed with it that I would love to share the recipe with you - even through it's not part of my challenge to cook a dish from every country in the world. The original recipe is here - and makes two loaves. Scroll down to make one loaf!

If you don't believe how pillowy it was just check the photo below!

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

• 70ml of single cream

• 130ml milk

• 1 egg

• 50 g of sugar

• 50g of plain flour (+ extra for dusting)

• 256g strong white bread flour

• 7g yeast

• 1 tsp salt

• Optional Syrup (water and sugar) to brush on at the end.

Method

1. Whisk the egg and divide in half.

2. In a mixing bowl add the following ingredients in this order: cream, milk, half the egg, sugar, cake flour, bread flour, yeast, and salt. Knead for about 20 minutes (15 in a mixer) until the gluten is developed.

3. This dough is very wet – but add a bit of flour if needed.

4. Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover. Leave it in a warm place for an hour until increased in size by about 50%.

5. In the meantime grease a loaf or cake tin.

6. Once the dough has finished proofing, knock it back and shape. It can be shaped into three buns in a loaf pan, or in about 8 knots in a cake tin. Cover and proof for another hour.

7. Preheat the oven to 180 C / 170 C Fan/ 350 F/ Gas mark 5. Make an egg wash by adding about 1Tbs of water to the remaining egg.

8. Brush the risen dough with egg wash. Bake the loaves for 23-25 minutes.

9. Once out of the oven you can brush with a simple syrup if you wish.

10. Cool on a cooling rack.