Condensed Milk Sweet Bread
I bought my bread maker back in late December but I hesitated to use it. On the one hand, the idea of a fresh loaf with little effort on my part was highly appealing but, in my complicated brain, it also felt wrong. After all, one of the main things I enjoy about bread making is handling the dough. Wouldn't this be...cheating?
What a difference a few months can make! Because my sourdough starters have been so successful, I bake a loaf twice a week. If I didn't have the bread maker and a very good sourdough bread recipe for it, I'd either be drowning in starter or wasting a heck of a lot of it. It's been great! I decided it was time to explore the other settings on the machine. Today's recipe has the machine doing the initial mixing so I got to do the shaping, raising and baking!
Here's today's cast. I forgot the oil in the cupboard at this point...
Warm water, yeast and half a cup of sweetened condensed milk is added to the machine's bread pan.
The flour, salt, and then the oil were added. The order ingredients are placed into a bread maker is important and may vary slightly from one machine to another. I have been ignoring my bread maker's ordering of ingredients because it often has the yeast added last. With the salt. In my mind, yeast should be added to the sugar and water so it can start proofing. Salt should be last so it doesn't interfere with that. You'd think the Hamilton Beach people would know that. Hmmm.
I used the dough setting and about 90 minutes later, I had this nice, cohesive ball. I honestly thought it was going to be a soft dough. It turned out to have a nice spring to it.
The springiness was a tiny bit challenging; I divided the dough into three parts easily enough but shaping it into three long-ish strands was difficult. The dough kept wanting to shrink back in on itself. So much for all my hours of Play Doh molding with Aiden. Play Doh stays put. This dough had other ideas.
I started plaiting. In retrospect, I should have asked Eric (who was shooting pictures over my shoulder) to hold onto the dough to give me some tension. That would have allowed me to draw the dough out a bit farther as I did the braiding. Since I didn't do that, the top of the braid was plump but the lower section was neater and more uniform.
I reached the bottom, gently squeezed the strands together and tucked them slightly underneath. Not bad for my first plait.
I transferred it onto a parchment-covered pan and let it sit for 30 minutes. I don't have a photo for the next part but right before I popped it into the oven, I applied egg white to it. Since my pastry brush from Amazon is still MIA, the whites didn't get too uniformly applied.
After about 50 minutes in a 340F oven, the loaf was beautifully browned though unevenly shiny thanks to my unorthodox egg white application.
After the bread had thoroughly cooled, it sliced beautifully and had a nice even crumb. It was a hit with the guys; there was a sweetness, though not so much that it became a dessert bread, and it had a nice chewiness to it.
It's definitely time to explore the other machine settings--it can make jam!
Here is the promised link:
Bread Machine Condensed Milk Sweet Bread
Equipment recommendation:
Hamilton Beach Bread Maker
Here's today's cast. I forgot the oil in the cupboard at this point...
Warm water, yeast and half a cup of sweetened condensed milk is added to the machine's bread pan.
The flour, salt, and then the oil were added. The order ingredients are placed into a bread maker is important and may vary slightly from one machine to another. I have been ignoring my bread maker's ordering of ingredients because it often has the yeast added last. With the salt. In my mind, yeast should be added to the sugar and water so it can start proofing. Salt should be last so it doesn't interfere with that. You'd think the Hamilton Beach people would know that. Hmmm.
I used the dough setting and about 90 minutes later, I had this nice, cohesive ball. I honestly thought it was going to be a soft dough. It turned out to have a nice spring to it.
The springiness was a tiny bit challenging; I divided the dough into three parts easily enough but shaping it into three long-ish strands was difficult. The dough kept wanting to shrink back in on itself. So much for all my hours of Play Doh molding with Aiden. Play Doh stays put. This dough had other ideas.
I started plaiting. In retrospect, I should have asked Eric (who was shooting pictures over my shoulder) to hold onto the dough to give me some tension. That would have allowed me to draw the dough out a bit farther as I did the braiding. Since I didn't do that, the top of the braid was plump but the lower section was neater and more uniform.
I reached the bottom, gently squeezed the strands together and tucked them slightly underneath. Not bad for my first plait.
I transferred it onto a parchment-covered pan and let it sit for 30 minutes. I don't have a photo for the next part but right before I popped it into the oven, I applied egg white to it. Since my pastry brush from Amazon is still MIA, the whites didn't get too uniformly applied.
After about 50 minutes in a 340F oven, the loaf was beautifully browned though unevenly shiny thanks to my unorthodox egg white application.
After the bread had thoroughly cooled, it sliced beautifully and had a nice even crumb. It was a hit with the guys; there was a sweetness, though not so much that it became a dessert bread, and it had a nice chewiness to it.
It's definitely time to explore the other machine settings--it can make jam!
Bread Machine Condensed Milk Sweet Bread
Equipment recommendation:
Hamilton Beach Bread Maker
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