Japanese milk bread

Ingredients

• Starter paste
• All purpose flour (Maida) - 1/4 cup.
• Water - 1/4 cup.
• Milk - 1/4 cup.
• For the Dough
• All purpose flour - 2 3/4 cup
• Salt - 1 tsp
• Butter - 1/3 cup
• Egg - 1
• Milk - 2/3 cup
• Sugar - 2 tbsp
• Active dry yeast - 2 1/4 tsp or 7g
• Heavy cream or milk - 11/2 tbsp (for brushing the tops of the bread before baking)

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Preparation

• In a pan add flour, water, and milk and boil the mixture on medium heat for 5 minutes, while continuously stirring. Remove from heat when a thick paste is formed. Allow this paste to cool to room temperature.
  
  In a large mixing bowl add lukewarm milk and sprinkle package of active dry yeast to it. Cover, and let the yeast activate. This will take approximately 10 minutes.
• To this add melted room temperature butter, sugar, salt, lightly whisked egg, and the paste from step 1 and whisk well.
  
  Add flour to the above liquid mixture and knead using hand for a good 10 minutes or till you get a nice elastic dough that does not stick to the bowl. Cover and let the dough rise for 1 hour.
• After 1 hour the dough should have doubled in size. Scrape the dough on to a well floured surface and lightly knead for a minute. Now divide the dough into 4 equal parts.
  
  Roll each of the four parts into a small rectangular shape (need not be perfect). Fold each of the longer edges of the rectangle to meet at the center. Now roll from the the shortest edge to form a log. Repeat this for the remaining three portions of the dough.
• Take a well greased loaf pan and place each of the dough logs with their seam side down. Cover the loaf pan with an aluminium foil and place it in a warm spot for about an hour. After 1 hour the dough would have doubled in size as shown below.
• Preheat the oven to 350 F. Brush the tops of the risen bread with heavy cream and then bake for about 45 - 60 minutes or until the internal temperature is about 200 F. Allow it to cool down.
  
  Japanese Milk Bread is now ready. serve with butter and enjoy.