Pain au lait: My Bread Baking Obsession

 

Having a tough day? Just head for the kitchen and bake yourself a bread!! 
Seriously making bread from scratch is actually quite therapeutic. You can pound, knead, thrash the dough with all your might leaving you feeling much lighter and free of all your pent up frustrations. On the plus side, you are rewarded with a delicious loaf of freshly baked bread, the heady aroma completely healing your soul.
That is why I am so glad to be a part of this bread baking group "We Knead to bake" on facebook where you get to bake a new bread every month. (Though it is another matter that the healing therapy is required much more than just once a month but I cope). Each member is supposed to make the assigned bread where sometimes it is quite interesting to see the variations the members come up with. Aparna, who is the admin, does a lot of research and comes with amazing new breads every month, which probably would be hard to discover on your own. Check out my recipe of the two of these breads which I baked along with this group - Flaounes, which is a delicious Cypriot bread made on Easter and Foccacia Caprese. The recipes given for the breads are tried and tested by Aparna herself and not once have the breads failed to 'rise to the occasion'. 
Another great bread that we baked recently was Petit Pains au Lait which are basically small French bread rolls enriched with milk. As might be evident from the title, the only liquid used in the dough is milk and of course a generous amount of butter. The resultant texture is rich but still not as rich as Brioche and have a light airiness about them. Pains au Lait typically have a hint of sweetness in them and the pearl sugar that dots the surface adds to the sweetness. They have a beautiful golden crust on the outside concealing a soft flaky inside because of the unusual technique rolling and folding technique used. Then they are decorated by cutting through the top with scissors in a manner which results in a beautiful pattern typical of a Pain au lait. 

This dough is also pretty good to shape into any pattern of your choice.

                

Ingredients: 

(Adapted from Gourmet by Kat -http://gourmetbykat.blogspot.in/2013/10/pain-au-lait-milk-bread.html )
2/3 cup warm milk (you might need a little more)
1 tsp instant yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup bread flour*

1/4 tsp salt

60 gm butter, soft at room temperature

Extra milk for brushing

Pearl sugar for topping (optional)**

Method:

*If you don’t have bread flour, put 2/3 tsp vital wheat gluten in your 3/4 cup measure and top up with all-purpose flour. Mix this well. 

If you don’t have vital wheat gluten, then just use 3/4 cup all-purpose flour like I did.

**This topping is optional. The pearl sugar looks pretty and adds a little crunch. You can also use large crystals of sugar or a bit of regular granulated sugar.

You can knead by hand or use a machine. I used my Kitchen Aid mixer. (No, please I am not trying to show off my KA machine here but I just can't stop telling everyone how fantastic it really is!!)
Put the warm milk, yeast and sugar in the bowl. 
Whisk it for a couple of minutes. 
Then add all the flour and the salt and mix until it looks crumbly.
Add the butter and knead until you have a soft, smooth and elastic dough that’s not sticky. Add a little more milk (in teaspoonful at a time), if your dough is dry, until you have the required consistency of dough. 
Shape the dough into a ball and place it in an oiled bowl, turning it over to coat with oil. Cover loosely and set aside to rise until double in volume. Punch the risen dough and knead well.

Once the dough is ready, punch out the air and make 10 equal parts.

Use a rolling pin to roll out a circle of about 8 cm.

Roll up the circle from one end, jelly roll style into a cylinder.

Pinch the ends and place seam side down on a greased tray. Allow to rise again.

Before baking, brush the dough with egg wash

                   
Using a sharp scissor make diagonal cuts and sprinkle with sugar. 
(Check out the video here if you are interested to see exactly how to make the pattern on the bread.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYJXPnVo4uUandhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q_VLU1IDfI )

Bake in a preheated oven at 200 C for about 15 minutes or until they are golden brown.

Let them cool on a rack. Serve them warm or at room temperature. 

A Japanese traditional bread - Melonpan

“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.” – Robert Browning

I had never heard of a Melonpan before. Neither heard of it before or seen it anywhere. It does seem an odd name for a bread but because the appearance of the bread resembles a melon such as cantaloupe (our Indian Kharbuja) hence the name Melonpan. 

This bread is a type of sweet bun, traditionally from Japan but is also highly popular in Taiwan, China and Latin America. These sweet soft rolls are covered in a crispy cookie dough and scored on top in a cross-hatch pattern to resemble the look of a melon skin. The unique combination of the bread dough with the sweet cookie on the top lends the bread an interesting texture apart from it tasting really good. Each dough is left for second proofing after the pastry layer is wrapped around it. The inner bread dough will rise and cause the outer pastry layer to crack all over the surface. The name came about as the appearance of the cracked surface resembles a rock melon. In addition, for a basic or standard Japanese melon pan, melon extract is commonly used to add fragrance

The bread dough for these buns is mostly left plain, though some people add chocolate chips,(like I did), while others fill the buns with cream cheese, custard/ pastry cream or even chopped chocolate. You can go whichever way you choose, plain or with some filling or flavor. You can also use your choice of flavoring for the cookie dough like chocolate, green tea, pineapple, etc if you like. 

I was first introduced to this beautiful bread when Aparna from our bread baking group "We knead to bake" announced that this would be the bread all of us would be baking for the month. At first, reading through the recipe, I was a bit intimidated by it as it sounded a bit complicated with the many steps involved.and believe me this is when I have been baking bread for a number of years. The video link provided by Aparna was quite helpful to clear away some of my doubts and I set out to make this wonderful bread.

It was fun to do this bread. I could never imagine a bread to be baked with cookie dough on top making me extremely curious to know what the end result would taste like. The pastry dough was really soft and more manageable to work with after chilling it in the fridge for some time. The sugar sprinkled on the top of the pastry dough lend a lovely golden hue and an amazing crispness to the bread. I found that the the bread layer was extremely light and soft and along with the crunchy cookie shell on top, it tasted heavenly especially when it was warm and fresh out of the oven. Without a doubt it was a big hit in my house and I will certainly be making this bread quite a bit in the future. 

Both the doughs are made with egg as this gives the bread a better texture. If you don’t eat eggs, you can leave them out, but substitute for it in the bread dough with a tablespoon of yogurt or milk.

This recipe makes 8 burger bun sized (the ones we get in India) Melon Pan. You can bake a half batch or even make smaller Pan by dividing both doughs into 10 or 12 instead of 8.

Please see this video before you start making the bread.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z0e-GKJA10

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from A Bread A Day

For bread dough:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (plus extra as required)

2 tbsp milk powder

1 tsp instant yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup cold water

1 egg, beaten

1 tbsp sugar

25gm butter, at room temperature

1/3 cup chocolate chips

For cookie dough:

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

A large pinch of salt

60 gm butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup castor sugar (increase to 1/3 cup for sweeter dough)

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon lemon zest

Castor sugar for dusting (granulated sugar will do too)

Method:

Please watch the video, before you start on this bread so you have a good idea on how to shape the Melon Pan. Whisk together the flour, powdered milk, yeast, and salt in the bowl (or the bowl of your machine if using one). 

In a smaller bowl, beat the egg and cold water together with a fork till well blended. Add this to the flour mixture in the bowl.

Knead (on low speed in the machine) till it all come together as a dough and then (on medium speed) until you have a somewhat stiff dough. Add the sugar and knead well.

Now add the butter and knead (first at slow speed and then on medium) until the butter is completely incorporated into the dough and the dough becomes smooth and elastic. 

Shape the dough into a round, and place it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover and let it rise till double in volume (about an hour or so).

During this time make the cookie dough. 

In a bowl, cream the soft butter and sugar till fluffy.

Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat till combined. 

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt and add this to the bowl. Also add the lemon zest.

 Beat together until just combined.

Shape the dough into a cylinder (this will make the dough easy to divide and flatten out later), and wrap in cling film. Refrigerate the dough until required.

Now go back to the bread dough. 

Once it has doubled in volume, place it on a lightly floured work surface. Lightly grease your baking sheet or line it with parchment. Deflate the dough gently and divide it into 8 equal portions.

Shape each portion into a smooth ball like for bread rolls. Work with one portion and keep the others covered so they don’t dry out.

Unwrap the cookie dough. It should be reasonably firm now and easy to work with. Slice the cylinder of cookie dough into 8 equal portions. Use two pieces of plastic sheets or cling film to flatten the cookie dough. 

Place one slice/ round of cookie dough on a piece of plastic sheet/ cling film. Cover with another piece, and using a flat bottomed pan, press down on the dough to flatten it, until it is reasonably thin but not very much so.

Carefully take on ball of bread dough (it will have puffed up a little so don’t deflate it). Add in the chocolate chips.

 and roll it into a ball.

Place the circle of cookie dough on top of it. 

Gently press the cookie dough edge to the bread dough ball so that it covers the top and sides of the ball, but leaves the bottom open. 

Gently, holding the covered bread dough by the underside, press it into some castor sugar. Then using a scraper, or the blunt side of a knife, mark the top of the cookie dough side of the bread roll with a cross hatch/ diamond pattern. The pattern should be deep enough (otherwise it will disappear when the bread rises and bakes) without cutting through the cookie dough layer into the bread.

Place this on the greased or parchment lined baking sheet. Repeat this with the remaining cookie dough and bread dough balls. Let them rise for an hour.

Bake them at 180C (350F) for about 25 minutes, until the tops of the Melon Pan just start turning brown. If you let them brown too much, the underside of the bread will burn. Transfer to a wire rack to cool thoroughly.