🍞 SATURDAY JAPANESE MILK BREAD BAKE-ALONG: Our Working Thread

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This is it. We're making Japanese Milk Bread today.

If you've never worked with tangzhong before, today's the day you learn why this technique changes everything. We cook a small portion of flour and milk into a paste before it goes into the dough. That paste traps moisture and keeps this bread impossibly soft for days. It's the reason Japanese bakery bread feels like a cloud and your regular sandwich loaf doesn't.

This dough is enriched: butter, eggs, milk, sugar. It's going to feel different from lean doughs. Softer. Stickier. Richer. Don't panic and don't add extra flour. Trust the process. The stand mixer does the heavy lifting here, and the dough will come together.

📱 Recipe Pantry Tip: At the top of every recipe page, look for the little chef's hat icon on the right side of the nav bar. Click it. That keeps your screen awake so you're not tapping your phone with floury elbows. The crescent moon next to it toggles dark mode if your kitchen is bright.

🔗 The Recipe: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/japanese-milk-bread?variant=yeasted

Before you start:

Take your butter, eggs, and milk out of the fridge NOW. Room temperature ingredients matter today.
Make your tangzhong first. It needs to cool before it goes into the dough. If you made it last night, even better.
Clear your counter. You'll need space for shaping.

Post your questions, your progress photos, your tangzhong shots, your shaped loaves, your finished bread. Everything goes here so we can all learn from each other.

I'm here all day, start to finish. Whether you're mixing right now or pulling your loaf out tonight, this thread stays open.

Let's see those milk breads. 👇

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