Chocolate Marble Milk Bread
Milk bread is one of my all time favorite bread! It’s so soft, light and perfect for breakfast toast. This is a combination of chocolate and plain dough laminated together to create this beautiful swirls. Recipe is adapted from Kristina Cho’s Mooncake and Milk Bread cookbook (@eatchofood) that you can get from here! And the lamination technique is inspired by Chiew See from @autumnkitchen
Makes a 7x4x4 inch pullman loaf pan
Ingredients:
For Tangzhong:
20g bread flour
100g whole milk
For the dough:
335g bread flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp instant yeast
1 egg
125g whole milk, warmed
All of the tangzhong, cooled to room temperature
50g unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp dutch processed cocoa powder
Steps:
1. To make the tangzhong, mix the milk and flour in a pot. Over a medium heat, cook the mixture until it forms a thick paste (make sure to keep stirring while cooking). Set aside and let it cool to room temperature.
2. In a mixing bowl with a dough hook attachment, add in all of the dough ingredients except the butter and cocoa powder. At the lowest speed, mix the ingredients until they roughly come together to form a dough. Increase the speed to medium level and continue kneading for about 10 minutes until the dough starts to look smooth.
3. Add in the softened butter and continue kneading for another 10 minutes, until it passes the window pane test*.
4. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions. Add one of the portions back to the mixing bowl with the dough hook and add in cocoa powder. At the lowest speed, mix the dough with the cocoa powder until it's fully incorporated into the dough.
5. Shape both of the doughs into round balls, and place them in a bowl covered and let them proof at a slightly warm area (about 78F) until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
6. Once proofed, punch the doughs to release the air. Shape them to a ball, cover and let them rest for about 15 minutes.
7. Grease the pullman loaf pan with butter. Make sure every corner of the pan is well greased.
8. Roll the plain dough out to 7inch wide (to fit the width of the loaf pan) and about 14inch long. Repeat for the chocolate dough.
9. Layer the chocolate dough onto the plain dough such that 1/3 of the plain dough on top, in the middle you will have the layered plain and chocolate dough and the end is just the chocolate dough. Fold them into a letter form by folding in the top plain dough to the center, followed by the bottom chocolate dough folding to the center. Rest the dough for about 10 minutes. Roll the dough out again and make a single fold and rest, and repeat it for another time for more layers. Roll the dough out vertically until you get about 12 inch long and 4 inch wide. Slice the dough vertically into 3 pieces and braid the dough. Place the braided dough into the loaf pan (I have a 7 x 4 x 4 inch loaf pan). Cover it and let it proof again until doubled in size or until the dough reaches close to the top of the pan.
10: Preheat the oven to 350F. Bake the bread for about 30-32 minutes or until golden brown. If the top of bread browns too quickly, gently place a foil paper over the top to prevent over browning (I usually do this at the 15 min mark)
11. Once baked, remove the bread from the pan immediately and let it cool on a cooling rack for about 10-15 minutes before slicing. It's easier to slice the bread when it's at room temperature.
12. You should see the chocolate swirl on your first slice. Time to enjoy some freshly baked bread!
* Window pane test is very crucial in bread baking process because it helps determine whether the dough has built up enough gluten. To do this test, take a small piece of dough, stretch the dough out as wide as possible - if it doesn't break and able to create a very thin, almost transparent film, that's when it passes the window pane test.