Simple Milk Bread / Pan au Lait
You may not know this, but one of the biggest secrets in baking is using one dough to make a variety of baked goods. Pan au Lait (pronounced pan-oh-lay) is a standard soft and semi-sweet dough that has endless possibilities for breads, rolls, pastries, etc. In the coming weeks, I will introduce other versatile doughs that have the ability to be used in multiple applications.
Simple Milk Bread / Pan au Lait
500 g Bread Flour
14 g Salt, Kosher
8 g Yeast, Dry Active
50 g Sugar, Granulated
5 g Malt
75 g Eggs, Whole
255 g Milk
105 g Butter, Unsalted (softened)
- Mix together the first 5 ingredients in a large bowl. Note* Malt is a natural product created from grains. It assists in breaking down proteins to be used by the yeast.
- Add eggs and milk to the mixture and mix for 3 minutes on speed 2. Remember to scrape down the bowl if necessary. Speed 2 is the measurement of speed on a KitchenAid stand mixer. This would be the lowest speed available on other machines.
- Move mixing speed to 4 (medium-low to medium on other mixers) and continue mixing for 1 minute.
- While still mixing, add the softened butter in small pieces to the dough. When tossing in the butter pieces, aim towards the center of the bowl. You may stop the mixing and scrape down the sides of the bowl to insure full mixing. Mix till the butter chunks are no longer visible and dough has pulled away from sides of your bowl.
- Cover and rest your dough in the mixing bowl for 1 hour.
- Fold the dough from all sides towards the middle and flip the dough over while still inside the bowl. Rest covered for 1 more hour. **folding process: You will want to moisten your hand well with water to handle the dough. Picture a plus (+) symbol on top of your dough. Take your wet hands and slide them against the bowl under one of the 4 arms of your plus symbol. Pull up on the dough and slightly stretch over the middle. Repeat this step with the opposite side of the plus symbol. Do this again with the remaining 2 sides of your plus symbol. All 4 sides should now be in the middle. With both wet hands, pull dough ball up and flip over putting your exposed folds underneath. Check step 8 of Good Buns Run in the Family for pictures of the folding process.
- Following the 1 hour rest, your dough is now ready to divide and shape.
In the following 3 posts, I will show you what kinds of different breads you can make using this one recipe. Come back on Wednesday to learn about how to use Pan au Lait to create an easy breakfast pastry. Have your kids help you, it is really THAT simple. Besides, you will need help eating the end result. Take this time to order your malt powder and don’t worry, we will be using malt for more recipes in the future. See you Wednesday!
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