Use your Pasta Madre to make Squishsquishbread

If you have a pasta madre, you would know that we have to refresh and maintain it daily. Sure, we can just tie it and put in the fridge for a week or two so we can get a rest, but a PM that is maintained daily is just slightly different, wouldn't you agree? I want to maintain it, but I feel conflicted about wasting so much flour, for no reason. And I don't want to make panettone every single week. My family is getting bored!

Have you tried my squishsquishbread recipe before? It's a very soft and fluffy milk shokupan that STAYS fluffy for at least 4 days, kept in room temperature. It went a bit viral on Instagram, and I also notice some bakers making it claiming their own without crediting me. Ah well, such is social media. That said, I have been using my PM to make squishsquishbread and it tastes AMAZING!! Our pasta madre gives it a yoghurty flavour which makes the bread taste creamier than ever. I don't know how to describe it, but you just have to try it.

What you need is just to refresh the PM once before use. From the night before, you give it a warm refresh as usual. Then, just feed it once more and use it. Mix the dough as you would any shokupan. Mix all ingredients (except butter) until a strong dough forms, then add butter at the very end until windowpane is achieved. Let it rest for 45 minutes at 28C, then divide and shape. After shaping, proof it in the loaf pan and let it rise overnight. The duration of final proof depends very much on your PM's strength, yeast activity and also your ambient temperature. It can be anywhere from 10 hours to 14 hours. Don't worry though. I have proofed it for 14 hours before, and it still came out excellent.

This is a recipe for 3 loaves (20x10x10cm loaf pan) because I only make it once a week. One loaf for my parents, and 2 loaves for my 3 kids to take to school. Please divide it by 3 if you want to make just 1 loaf.

Tangzhong 50g flour + 250g milk. Cook and whisk at the same time, until it reaches 65C. If you choose to use water instead of milk, your tangzhong will be much runnier. I suggest using 230g water instead. You can also use 125g water+125g milk. If you notice your final bread is a tad dry, you can use this method. Once tangzhong is ready, cover it and keep it in the fridge.

PM 200g

Bread Flour 770g

Liquid is a mixture of milk and 2 eggs. Total should come to 360g

All of tangzhong. It's OK if you don't get 300g because some will definitely be lost through cooking and transferring.

Condensed milk 75g (you can replace this with whipping cream if you want a softer bread that is less sweet)

Sugar 75g

Salt 12g

Unsalted butter 90g (I have tried increasing this amount before, and the bread is dreamy! You can try increasing up to 120g)

The next morning when the dough is 1cm from the rim, bake it at 170C for about 30-35 minutes. Bake setting depends very much on your personal oven so please adjust accordingly. If you baked it too long in the oven, the result will be a drier bread. If you didn't bake it enough, the bread might collapse or shrink in the middle, like having a sexy waistline, only, it's not nice on a bread. If it's very undercooked, you will notice you bread start to shrink really badly, and when you slice it, the sides are hard and gelatinized.

This is a schedule that I enjoy, because I don't need to rush. I hope you try it and enjoy this too. One thing I noticed about the taste is that it gets progressively more sour. Bread, as usual, is best eaten fresh. For this to keep well, please store it tight in a ziplock bag and freeze it. Do let me know if you make this.

Happy baking!

Lily