Leopard Milk Bread Recipe By French Baker (2024)

FAQs

What makes milk bread different? ›

Milk bread dough is an enriched dough, which means it has dairy (milk, cream, and/or butter), eggs, oil, and/or sugar added to it. It is softer and richer than regular breads, which are made with primarily flour, water, salt, and yeast.

Part of what makes milk bread so satisfying to eat is that feathery softness, which many bakers attribute to tangzhong, a roux that's incorporated into the dough.

If your milk bread is dense, mostly likely, the dough is under-kneaded. The dough needs to develop enough gluten to expand and become soft and fluffy. A sure way to ensure that the dough is kneaded enough is using the window pane test.

While underworked dough can simply be fixed by a little more kneading, severely overworked dough cannot be fixed. Instead, the overworked dough will result in a hard loaf that will likely not be eaten. It's important not to overwork your dough and continually check for overworking throughout the kneading process.

Milk bread was developed in Japan in the 20th century, using tangzhong, a warm flour-and-water paste traditionally used in China to make buns with a soft, springy texture and tiny air bubbles. Surprisingly, milk bread with an incomparable crumb and buttery taste is a snap to make at home, using supermarket ingredients.

Brioche is a much richer bread than Japanese milk bread. It uses a lot more butter than shokupan dough, giving brioche a sweeter and more buttery taste. Brioche is also made with eggs. This helps give brioche its signature golden color and a denser, chewier texture than shokupan.

Taste wise the milk bread was slightly sweeter than a regular loaf made with water would be. Buttermilk and yogurt loaves had a slightly more intense flavour with hints of acidity but also sweetness. The sour cream bread had the richest taste and mouthfeel.

Milk bread contains milk in the dough, giving it a softer texture and slightly sweet flavor. White bread is made with refined flour, water, yeast, and salt, resulting in a light and fluffy texture with a mild taste.

This makes a softer bread that resists staling, due to the added moisture. The liquid in milk bread is also important. Adding dairy in any form to bread makes for a more tender crumb, and the tangzhong in particular allows the flour to absorb and retain more moisture.

The characteristics of this bread are its delicate texture and subtly sweet taste. It has an exterior golden crust and an interior white crumb that's light as a cloud and fluffy as cotton! It's the most tender and moist bread you'll find.

Does milk bread taste different? ›

It has a milky-sweet flavor and a feathery soft texture that tears into wispy strands and melts in your mouth. It has none of the naturally leavened holes or sourdough tang that's prized these days among bread nerds.