I have been very very lucky to be able to get my hands on 吳寶春麥方店’s World Champion Rose-Lychee bread (荔枝玫瑰麵包) before, but not his Japanese style breads.  Looking at the whole array of items available at his bakery, I am not sure if I will settle with a plain looking milk loaf from the Master Baker.  But back at home, kids love white, soft and fluffy breads, and it’s going to be an impressive story to tell my husband that I baked a milk toast with this recipe supposedly from 吳寶春.

I did a very fast browse around the bakery website to see how the end result should look like, but could not find the item ‘金牌牛奶吐司’.  However, from the ingredients, I reckoned that it should be looking like this 皇冠吐司, or like another all milk version called 極制瑞穗鮮乳土司.  Despite doing my homework, I still ended up baking the loaf with my bread tin covered, even though the pictures online clearly show otherwise.

I have since found a few other 吳寶春‘s bread recipes videos online, with the master himself demonstrating the steps.  This is one generous Master Baker.

RECIPE : CHAMPION’S MILK TOAST | 吴宝春金牌牛奶吐司
Source
INGREDIENTS :

- 300g plain flour or bread flour
- 24g fine sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 135g water
- 69g fresh milk
- 3/4 teaspoon instant yeast
- 15g unsalted butter, cubed

INSTRUCTIONS

01. Put all ingredients, EXCEPT BUTTER, in the  mixing bowl.
02. With a flat beater attachment, mix all ingredients at low speed (1 on my kitchenaid)
03. Change to a dough hook, and continue to knead the dough, adding cubed butter gradually.  Keep kneading till dough reached window pane stage.  You may increase the speed of the mixer to level 2 halfway when the dough starts to look stretchy and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
04. Remove the bowl from the mixer, grease working hand slightly with butter so that the dough won’t stick to fingers, loosely shape the dough into a ball*.
05. Cover the bowl with a clean damp tea towel, and let it proof for at least 60 minutes (or until it double in size).
06. After the dough has double in size, punch the dough down, and move it to a clean work top.
07. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions, roll each into a neat ball, leave it on the counter covered with towel for 15 minutes.
08. After 15 minutes, the dough rise again.  With a rolling pin, flatten the dough, pushing out trapped air inside, then loosely roll up, swiss roll style.
09. Cover with towel, and proof for another 15 minutes.
10. Repeat step 8, place dough inside the bread tin, covered with towel, and let it have a final rise.
11. For square loaf : Once dough has risen to fill up about 90% of the bread tin, cover bread tin, wait for another 15 minutes (to let dough rise all the way to the top), and bake for 40 minutes in a preheated oven at 210C / 410F.
12. If bake without cover, bake for 30minutes at 170C / 240F.

++ NOTES TO SELF ++
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this dough will be sticky, almost impossible not to stick to fingers when touched, so I had to use the tucking method (using greased fingers to tuck/fold the sides of the dough to its base)  to roughly shape it into a neat ball for its first proof. See photo 3,  it’s not all smooth and perfect, but good enough.
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my bread tin measures 20x10x10 inches.