Cinnamon Poolish Milk Bread
This cinnamon poolish milk bread uses a long overnight starter to help create the uber soft and fluffy bread that’s lightly sweetened and spiced.
Girl (and I mean that in a gender neutral way that applies to everyone) I love me some milk bread. Milk bread, if you’ve never had it is just one of the most soft and fluffy breads you’ll ever enjoy. Like consuming a cloud. It’s a Japanese/Asian bread that usually uses the tangzhong or yudane method to help create that texture. After chatting with a fellow baking friend and blogger Rachel I wanted to try creating a poolish method of my milk bread.
Poolish is not something I usually use when baking, but it’s a pretty common method in bread baking. Essentially you take a portion of the liquid, flour and a TINY bit of yeast and stir them together. Then, you let it sit and ferment for an extended period of time. I use a similar method with some recipes, but most of these aren’t considered poolish because it’s the entirety of the recipe. This pre-ferment is to add time which adds flavor and complexity to your recipe without needing the whole dough to have long proofing times.
Baking Tips & Notes
When I started testing this recipe, I tested it both with and without cinnamon. Cinnamon often can inhibit yeast growth so I wanted to make sure the recipe worked on it’s own and how it fared differently when adding cinnamon. If you’d like to bake this sans cinnamon, it works without it just the same. If you do bake this without cinnamon, I would reduce the sugar from 3 tbsp to 2 tbsp.
Baking this in a 9×5 loaf pan yielded the best results. You can use a slightly smaller pan but the loaf will need a longer bake time which can result in the top getting overly browned. This also most likely could be baked as rolls, reducing the bake time significantly, but I have not tested this yet. I will update the recipe once I have.
Poolish Milk Bread Key Ingredients
Normally I highlight three important ingredients, these three happen to be the ones for poolish which makes the recipe unique.
- Bread flour – Bread flour has a higher protein count or percentage than all purpose. This extra protein provides strength which helps the gluten network to be stronger. Stronger gluten means better rise. You can almost always sub all purpose for bread flour, but you do change the texture of your bread slightly. If you enjoy baking bread, I would always advocate for having bread flour on hand.
- Water – This is a swap for me, as in my regular milk bread the tangzhong uses milk. However, you won’t notice the missing milk especially if using the dry milk powder.
- Instant Yeast – The poolish only takes a TINY amount of yeast, but when you uncover your bowl the next morning you will see even that little amount has went to work.
Ingredients
Poolish
- 80 g (â…” cup) Bread flour
- 80 g (⅓ cup) Water ~95-100°F
- pinch Instant yeast
Dough
- 260 g (2 cups + 2½ tbsp)) Bread flour
- 15 g (2 tbsp) Bakers dry milk
- 7 g (2¼ tsp) Instant yeast
- 6 g (1 tsp) Sea salt
- 37 g (3 tbsp) Granulated sugar
- 1 large Egg room temperature
- 120 g (½ cup) Whole or 2% milk ~95-100°F
- 1 tbsp Cinnamon
- Poolish
- 28 g (2 tbsp) Unsalted butter room temperature
Instructions
- In a small-medium bowl, add your bread flour, water and yeast and stir together with a spoon or spatula. It should form a sticky paste.80 g Bread flour | 80 g Water | pinch Instant yeast
- Cover your bowl and let sit on the counter for 12-24 hours. You can do less time, but the poolish will not have developed as much flavor at anything around 8 hours or less.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer with dough hook attached, add flour, dry milk, yeast, salt, sugar, egg, milk, cinnamon and your poolish.260 g Bread flour | 15 g Bakers dry milk | 7 g Instant yeast | 6 g Sea salt | 37 g Granulated sugar | 1 large Egg | 120 g Whole or 2% milk | 1 tbsp Cinnamon | Poolish
- Turn your mixer on low and let ingredients come together and form a dough (usually about 5 minutes).
- Add one tablespoon of butter and continue kneading until the butter has been fully incorporated into the dough before adding the second. Let dough mix/knead until smooth and stretchy. (10-20 minutes)28 g Unsalted butter
- Remove dough from bowl, lightly spray with cooking spray and return the dough into the bowl in a ball shape.
- Cover your bowl and let proof in a warm area until dough has risen to about twice the size (1-2 hours).
- Take a 9×5 loaf pan and line with parchment. Set aside.
- Remove your dough from the bowl and divide into 4 equal portions. Using a scale can help make sure your dough is perfectly divided, however it is not crucial.
- Take one portion and roll out into a rectangle about 8-10 inches long and about 4-5 inches wide. Take one end of the short side and roll the dough up. Place seam side down into your prepared loaf pan.
- Repeat this process with the remaining portions of dough. Cover your loaf pan and allow the dough to rise for another 30-60 minutes or until the dough has puffed up.
- Towards the end of proofing, preheat your oven to 350°F.
- When the loaf is ready, uncover and place on the center rack baking for about 22 minutes.
- When the bread is baked, remove from the oven and let cool in the loaf pan for about 15 minutes before removing from pan and letting finish cooling on a wire rack. Let the bread cool completely before slicing.Store in an airtight container for 2-4 days. Enjoy!
