Vegan Hokkaido Milk Bread

This past January I decided to bake only vegan breads. The reason? Because I took on the Veganuary challenge and I didn’t want to have temptations around me!

For the past 2 years or so I’ve been following a mostly plant-based diet. Not continuously, but I did reduce significantly the amount of animal products that I eat. It was the only way I had to stop all my stomach problems. If I eat meat several days in a row, my stomach starts complaining again. After the holidays and, of course, after eating a lot of everything, my stomach wasn’t feeling good, so veganuary seemed like the perfect moment to go back to my veggies. And I must say that I feel so much better, I sleep better, my face is clearer, my digestions are great and, contrary to what many people think, I get enough protein and nutrients.

If you read my previous post, you know fiber is important for me, and a vegan diet it’s full of it! To be honest, I think all these benefits I get from eating vegetables are, in part, related to an improvement in my gut microbiota. My lovely gut bugs are having a feast with all this fiber! Plus, I did lose some weight because I am eating healthier.

NOTE: I have been tracking my diet and protein intake with a nutritionist. So, if you want to change your diet, and especially if you have any health condition whatsoever, you should talk to your doctor or a nutritionist first. A vegan diet works for me and I really feel the benefits, but it doesn’t have to be the same for you. With that being said, and regardless of your diet… eat your veggies! 😊

LET’S VEGANIZE A RECIPE!

Or… You can jump to the Recipe!

Since I started flirting with a plant-based diet I’ve been having the same question in the back on my mind: how do you replace eggs in bread baking? You can always switch butter with a non-dairy option, or vegetable oil… but eggs? Then it kicked me, what are eggs but a mixture of fat (yolk) and liquid protein (whites)? All I had to do was replace the yolks with more fat and add a bit more liquid to make up for the whites. An oil and water emulsion should work perfectly!

The first thing that came to my mind was my Hokkaido bread recipe. It uses whipping cream as part of the liquid and it gives it an incredible crumb texture. I just thought that whipping cream can be easily replaced by coconut milk. My recipe only calls for 1 egg so I thought my experiment shouldn’t go too bad…

WHAT MAKES HOKKAIDO BREAD SPECIAL?

Something that defines Hokkaido milk bread is the Tangzhong method. This method is original from Asian countries (although now it’s widely used) and it really makes a difference in enriched doughs. Essentially, it’s a water roux. You cook a small amount of the flour of the recipe with part of the liquid of the recipe. When you start cooking the flour/liquid mixture, it’s just liquid. The more it heats up, the thicker it gets, until you end up with a paste, the tangzhong.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE STARCH?

The reason the tangzhong thickens is because of the “gelatinization of starch”. Flour has starch particles, and these particles love water and moisture. When you mix the liquid with the flour, the starch particles absorb moisture and then swell. When you also apply heat, these particles gelatinize, it’s as if they “explode” and open up forming a paste. That’s when you start seeing the liquid thicken. Depending on the amount of starch you have you might end up with a solid paste or with a liquid thick sauce.

WHY DOES TANGZHONG IMPROVE THE TEXTURE?

The role of starch in bread making is important because the particles get stuck to the gluten matrix and gives it elasticity. During baking, gelatinized starch also helps the gluten structure to not collapse. Let’s say the gluten is the skeleton and the gelatinized starch particles act as tendons and ligaments keeping everything together.

But this method goes beyond that! All the starch in the dough will gelatinize at some point during baking, but the pre-gelatinized starch of the tangzhong helps along the process by keeping the moisture. This translates into a very soft and fluffy crumb, and a bread that will last longer.

LET’S GO WITH THE RECIPE!

The first thing you need to do is prepare the tangzhong. You can make it ahead of time because you’ll use it at room temperature. So, give it time to cool down (or you could kill the yeast).

Mix the flour, the cold water, and the cold milk in a saucepan and give it a whisk until you don’t see flour lumps. Then start to heat it at medium heat (my stove has 10 levels of heat, I use the 6). Stir the mixture all the time, after a few minutes you’ll start seeing lumps, like custard-like lumps. Keep stirring, at some point I’d say to do it vigorously to be able to have a homogeneous paste. When you stir and start to see the bottom of the pan, pay attention! It’ll take no time to be ready! (I’m sorry, I Prepared it ahead of time and forgot to take a picture of mine).

Once it’s ready, transfer it to a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Make sure the wrap touches the surface. This way you won’t have the “skin”, when the surface dries out.

Let it cool down to room temperature. You can refrigerate it until you use it. Just make sure you don’t add it to the dough too cold. It might slow down fermentation times.

NOTE: once it cools down it’ll get harder, but don’t worry, it’s normal!

As always, to make the dough we first activate the yeast in the soy milk (or vegetable milk of your preference). If you want, you can add a bit of sugar from the recipe (about 1 tsp).

Then the yeast mixture is foamy, add it to a bowl, add the sugar, the coconut milk, the tangzhong, the vanilla extract and mix it very well.

Prepare the emulsion: mix the water and the olive oil until you get a with-ish viscous liquid.

In a separate bowl, sift the flour and the salt, and then add the wet ingredients, the emulsion and mix it with your hands until you don’t see dry flour particles.

Let it rest 20 or 30 minutes so the flour particles can hydrate.

Knead the dough very well, it should pass the “window pane test” and it should be elastic and smooth. Try not to use too much flour if you knead by hand, otherwise, you will change the flour:liquid ratio and the bread will turn out dry.

Lightly oil a container and place the dough in it. Let it rest until It has doubled in size.

Deflate the dough and separate it into 2 equal pieces. This recipe yields 2 loaves.

Take one of the balls, divide it into 4 pieces of equal weight and round each piece into a ball. Cover with a loose plastic wrap or a damped clean towel and let the balls rest 5 or 10 minutes so the gluten can relax a little bit and shaping the loaf can be easier!

Take one of the pieces and with your hand flatten it a little bit and give it an oval shape. If you need flour so the dough doesn’t get stuck on the counter, do so, but keep it to a minimum.

With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a larger oval. The length should be 20-22 (8-9 in approx.) cm and the width should be the width of your baking pan (My pan is 9.5 x 5 in – 23.9 x 12.6 cm).

Take the narrower side and start rolling the dough into a log. Place the log in the baking pan.

Do the same with the other 3 pieces of dough and cover the pan.

Let the loaf rise until it’s puffy. It doesn’t have to necessarily double in size. Just make sure it did grow and when you touch the dough, it puffs back slowly.

While you’re waiting for the dough to proof, preheat your oven at 350F (177 C).

Before baking, I brushed the dough with coconut milk leftovers. You can use soy milk or vegan butter… Whatever you prefer. I tried coconut milk and I liked the result!

If you see the bread is getting dark too quickly, reduce the temperature to 340F (171C) and cover it with aluminum foil.

Once you finish baking take the pan out of the oven and put it in a cooling rack for 20 mins before you take the bread out. The bread is still finishing up baking inside, if you shake it too much you could destroy the crumb.

This bread is very tasty! You can definitely taste the coconut, but the flavors are totally balanced. The coconut is not overwhelming. The crumb is very soft and cohesive. Look at how it “peels”!

Once the bread has cooled down to room temperature you can store it in a Ziplock bag.

I baked it in the evening and ate a piece, it was very good. But in my opinion, it was even better the next morning!

NOTE: With the other half of dough, you can either make another loaf, or dinner rolls, or anything you want. Deflate it very well, shape it the way you like it and let it rise at room temperature. If you want to retard the fermentation, let it rest 30 mins at room temperature first, and then move it to the fridge up to 12-14h. More than that might result in big bubbles that can burn during baking.