21The beauty
here isn’t just
that the loaf
tastes wonderful;
it’s that
the process of
making it invites
me to shut
off my brain.Maple Milk Bread
Time: 1 hour 5 minutes, plus rising time
For the tangzhong:
½ cup/72 grams bread fl our
1 cup/237 milliliters whole milkFor the bread:
½ cup/118 milliliters heavy cream
4 cups/576 grams bread fl our, plus more
as needed
1 cup/336 milliliters maple syrup
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons coarse kosher salt or 2¾
teaspoons kosher salt (Diamond Crystal)
4½ teaspoons/14 grams active dry yeast
(2 envelopes)
Nonstick cooking spray- Make the tangzhong: In a medium pot,
whisk together the bread flour and milk until
relatively smooth. Set over medium-low
heat, and cook, whisking constantly, until the
mixture thickens into a texture not unlike
On my most recent visit back home to
Atlanta, my mother asked me just before
I left if I could bake her a loaf — maybe
two, so she could give one to my brother
and his wife. I said sure, but this time I
would teach her how to make it herself
so she could have it whenever she want-
ed, and not just when I’m home. Family
recipes, even ones that come from sons
and not mothers, should be shared, not
held hostage. So we each took a pot out of
her cupboard. We would bake two loaves
side by side and compare crumbs later.
We started with the roux, or the tang-
zhong, a mixture of bread fl our and, in
this case, whole milk that gets cooked
on the stovetop and whisked vigorously
into a texture not unlike mashed potatoes.
Milk bread bakers will be familiar with
this preliminary step — or at least until
the maple syrup, a glossy river of it, is
pooled in. Jean was a natural at kneading,
which wasn’t a surprise. She was a potter
in a past life. I loved imagining her as a
ceramics major back in Seoul, decades
ago, learning to turn a ball of clay into a
vase that would someday sit in our living
room in Georgia, in our very fi rst house,
a two-story brick single-family at the top
of a hill, the one with the peach tree in
the front yard.
I can’t promise that this bread will
change your life. But what I do know is
that it can slow down time, maybe when
you need it most.mashed potatoes or grits, 2-3 minutes. You
may see lumps at first, but as you continue to
whisk, and the flour cooks, your mixture will
smooth out.- Make the bread: Remove the pot from
the heat, and whisk in the cream until smooth,
which will cool down the mixture and add
some necessary fat. To the creamy mixture,
add 4 cups/576 grams bread flour, the
maple syrup, egg, salt and yeast, and stir with
a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, until
you can no longer see any streaks of egg or
flour. Cover the pot with a lid, and let sit
in a warm place to proof and hydrate until
doubled in size, 1-2 hours. - To knead by hand, keep ½ cup/72 grams
of bread flour next to you. Dust a clean work
surface with some of the flour, and turn the
dough out onto the surface. Dust some more
flour on top of the dough and on your hands,
and knead the dough into a ball using both
hands. As you start to feel the dough get sticky,
add more of the flour. The goal here is to
not use more than that ½ cup of flour to knead
the dough, and at the same time develop
enough gluten in it so that it’s no longer sticky,
which should take 5-7 minutes. Alternatively,
knead with a stand mixer: Transfer the dough
from the pot to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted
with the dough-hook attachment. Knead on
medium-low speed for 15 minutes; it will
become pretty sticky and cling to the bowl.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface.
Dust some more flour on top of the dough and
on your hands, and form the dough into a ball
using both hands, adding more flour as needed. - Grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with cooking
spray. Cut the dough in half with a knife, then
flatten each piece using your hands, pulling the
corners of each piece up and over the center,
all around, so that you’re creating 2 tight balls.
Twist the pulled-up edges to seal, and turn
the balls over so their smooth sides are facing
up. Nestle the 2 balls side by side in the pan,
and let sit, covered with a clean kitchen towel,
in a warm place in your kitchen, until the dough
balls have risen an inch above the rim of the
pan, 1½-2½ hours. - Meanwhile, heat the oven to 350. Bake the
bread until the crust is dark brown and an
instant-read thermometer inserted in the center
reads 185-190 degrees, 40-45 minutes. - Remove from the oven, and let cool in the
pan for 5 minutes before taking the bread out
and slicing into it. (Technically it should cool
completely, but come on: There’s nothing like
the glorious experience of tearing into a fresh,
warm loaf of sweet milk bread.) The bread
will keep for up to 3-4 days in a closed container
at room temperature.
Yield: 1 loaf.to me: People who grew up eating this
bread, a common fi xture of Asian baker-
ies, should have a visceral reaction to it,
whether or not they have the exact words
to describe it. A ‘‘this is it’’ moment. That’s
because milk bread — a type of soft, boun-
cy white bread made with, yes, milk —
exists across cultures, so its taste, though
familiar to many, conjures a diff erent feel-
ing depending on who you are and how
you remember it. My maple loaf may not
be an exact replica of your classic Asian-
bakery milk bread, but it is milk bread
all the same. As Cho reassured me, ‘‘All
forms of milk bread are valid.’’
When I set out to develop this reci-
pe nearly two years ago, I didn’t know
how much it would give me. One loaf
has multiple lives: fi rst, fresh out of the
oven, sliced piping hot and eaten straight
over the sink. Next, toasted, buttered and
adorned with honey, jam or fl aky sea salt;
a cup of tea is excellent for washing that
down slowly. Later, when the loaf begins
to stale, it becomes grilled cheese with
tomato soup, hand-torn croutons for
roast chicken, French toast, bread pud-
ding and bread crumbs that are almost
too sweet for savory cooking and are
therefore just right.
The beauty here isn’t just that the loaf
tastes wonderful, existing within some
notional territory between a sweet bread
and a yeasted cake; it’s that the process
of making it invites me to shut off my
brain, to stop tinkering. I’ve found that
when I make time for this bread, with
its two rises, each an hour or more, I’m
also making time to take a bath, time to
read a book, time to pour myself a glass
of wine (usually all three). It feels as if I’m
lengthening the day beyond its 24 hours.
The process results in a sense of peace
and a loaf that’s almost pancake-sweet,
with a feathery texture like cotton candy,
as Cho described her ideal milk bread.
You should be able to peel back layer after
wispy layer.
‘‘Not every one of my loaves gets that
exceptional cotton candy texture,’’ Cho
said. ‘‘It’s the combination of kneading
time and humidity in the air that makes
the perfect loaf.’’ At fi rst this was a source
of great frustration for me, and I felt like a
bad baker whenever I didn’t achieve that
wispy, wheaten dream. But later, I real-
ized that the mercurial nature of bread
baking is in itself where the magic lies
— the magic of letting go.