Rice bread flour already carries salt and sugar, so the dough takes none of either. What it does take is an overnight tangzhong, a paste of flour and boiling water that holds water in the crumb and keeps the rolls soft for a day. The filling is a plain milk-crisp: butter, icing sugar, egg, milk powder and a spoon of osmanthus honey.
Chinese · Breakfast
Osmanthus Milk Bread With a Soft Rice Flour Crumb
A rice flour dough with an overnight tangzhong and a sweet osmanthus milk filling, rolled into six small loaves and baked hot and fast at 195 C.
- Prep60 min
- Cook15 min
- Serves6
- LevelMedium
Ingredients
| 35 g | strong flour |
| 5 g | caster sugar |
| 0.5 g | salt |
| 40 g | boiling water |
| 300 g | rice bread flour |
| 15 g | milk powder |
| 30 g | beaten egg |
| 3 g | instant yeast |
| 170 g | cold milk |
| 20 g | osmanthus honey |
| 20 g | butter , softened |
| 3 g | dried osmanthus flowers |
| 45 g | butter , softened |
| 10 g | icing sugar |
| 38 g | beaten egg |
| 135 g | milk powder |
| 1.5 g | dried osmanthus flowers |
| 20 g | osmanthus honey |
Method
- The night before, stir the strong flour, sugar and salt for the tangzhong together, pour in the boiling water and mix until no lumps remain, then cool and refrigerate overnight.
- Put all the dough ingredients except the butter and dried flowers into a mixer and work to a rough, coarse windowpane.
- Add the butter and mix until the dough is elastic and evenly developed; a thin, perfect membrane is not needed.
- Scatter in the dried osmanthus and mix on low just until combined, keeping the dough under 28 C and ideally between 23 and 26 C.
- Divide into six pieces, round them, cover and rest for 20 minutes without a first rise.
- For the filling, beat the soft butter with the icing sugar, add the egg in two or three goes, then the osmanthus honey, milk powder and dried flowers, and mix smooth.
- Roll each piece into a small rectangle, spread the filling over it, roll up from the long side and pinch the seam, giving a short cylinder.
- Proof at 33 to 35 C and 80 percent humidity until about 1.5 times the size, then dust with rice flour and score the tops lightly, shallow enough not to cut into the filling.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 195 C top and 185 C bottom for 15 minutes, then cool on a rack and bag once barely warm.
Notes
- Watch the dough temperature rather than the clock. Above 28 C the rolls proof fast and taste of yeast.
- Score only through the skin. Cutting into the filling lets it leak and burn against the tin.
Ratios and technique checked against 蔡蔡烘焙记 on Douguo (Q弹软糥｜桂花奶酥大米面包). The method here is written by Stellaok; the photograph is the source kitchen's, credited on the image above and linked back to the page it came from. No recipe text is reproduced.