Master Nogami's Milk Hearth Roll 野上師傅的牛奶哈斯麵包001

Its difficult to get hold of the French flour here in the UK. Strong bread flour which is typically used for bread makings have higher protein contains than the "bread" flour in France. 


Bread flour from the UK supermarket brands normally has the protein contains between 12 to 14%. For french breads, the two most used flour are T55 and T65. T55 contains 10 to 11% protein; T65 contains 11.5% protein. The small % difference in the flour makes a huge different in the bread outcome.. like the kneading time, proving time, the texture, the colour of the bread... arhhh


While I've been no luck with the french flour hunting, I still have a very good bread recipe that uses ordinary strong bread flour. The recipe's from the most famous Japanese Boulanger in Taiwan - 野上師傅 (Nogami), his book "名店麵包大公開：天然酵母、無人工添加物、100％健康" ---my bread bible! 


The Milk Hearth (牛奶哈斯) is a soft French bread that uses milk instead of water. This makes the dough silky soft to handle. All other ingredients are very simple like the other basic bread recipes.



After kneading and first proving. The dough's divided and shaped into long logs. Prove for 30 mins. 





The logs are rolled out and form into rolls. I love this dough, its very easy to handle. Soft and manageable.






After 1 hour of proving, they doubled (or tripled) in size. Surface scored and this's actually harder than i thought! One tips here: give the dough plenty of room between each other... they actually stuck together after proving and i had to transfer one log from each tray onto a different baking sheet (this deflated quite alot of "air") 



First patch comes out fresh and cute, they are very big as i was expecting little rolls...no... they are more like a Ciabatta size! The scoring was very shallow..... > < 



Second patch, i deepened the scores! They came out alot more like the one from the book! hohoohoh... happy! 



All batches and a little thought about scoring: scoring too deep makes massive cracks (top left); scoring too shallow makes invisible cracks (upper bottom ones); about 1 cm scores make perfect cracks (top right and lower bottoms).





Soft and bouncy... lovely lovely bread! 



Very good for sandwiches! For other loaves, they were turned into garlic bread... and they were probably the best garlic bread i've ever tasted!