Japanese Salt Bread(日式鹽麵包)

Redefining Recipes for the Digital Age

Ingredients

210 g bread flour
20 g cake flour
3 g instant yeast
5 g sugar
5 g salt
150 g cold water
6 g partially melted unsalted butter
60 g salted butter
Water spray
5 g melted unsalted butter
Coarse salt

Steps

1st 25 minutes (initial dough formation)
Start by adding all ingredients except for butter to a clean mixing bowl
Mix until there is no dry ingredient, and knead for about a minute so that a rough dough is formed
Let rest aside for 25 minutes
2nd 25 minutes (knead with butter)
Once 25 minutes is up, add the partially melted butter into the dough
Mix until butter is fully absorbed into the dough and there’s no greasiness on your hands
Cover up and let rest for 25 minutes
Set 1 (stretch & fold)
Let’s prepare for the first stretch and fold. Start by dampen your fingertips so that the dough doesn’t stick onto your fingers
First, stretch out the edge of the dough at 12 o’clock direction and fold it down to 6 o’clock
Then, rotate by 90 degrees and do the same thing: stretch out the edge of the dough at 12 o’clock direction and fold it down to 6 o’clock
Then again on the 3rd edge
And finally the last side
Once that done, let rest aside for 25 minutes. That is 1 set, and you need to do this 3 sets in total and 25 minutes resting in between
Set 2 (stretch & fold)
25 minutes later:
2nd set of stretch
And fold for all sides. Let rest aside for 25 minutes
Set 3 (stretch & fold)
Last set of stretch and fold
And this time you should see a dough with smooth surface
Let proof in a warm place until it has grown 1.5x in size (took about 1 hour)
Shaping
While waiting for the dough to proof, you can prepare the butter filling by cutting the 60 g of butter into 6 small pieces of 10 g each. Remember to put it back to the fridge so it doesn’t melt
Once proofing is done, poke your finger with flour into the dough. The dough should be bouncing back up very slowly
Transfer the dough onto a rolling mat with flour
Roll out the dough to remove air bubbles, and cut it into 6 even smaller doughs
You should shape and form a sphere as shown
After that, you need to form a cone shape as demonstrated
Then, slightly flatten the dough by rolling the top and bottom part
And elongate the whole dough as shown
Continue to repeat step 26 until you get a long thin dough
Then you can take out the prepared butter and a small bowl of water
Put a piece of butter about 2cm down the top
Dampen the edge of the dough with water
Start to roll down the dough gently
Until something like this. Remember to let the end tip facing downwards
Repeat for the remaining 5 doughs and put on a baking tray
Place the tray somewhere warm and let it proof the 2nd time for about 45 minutes
Preheat the oven to 210°C for at least 10 minutes
Before sending the breads into the oven, spray the breads with water very generously
Let bake in 210°C for 15 minutes and 220°C for another 5 minutes
Once done, the salt breads should be sizzling hot
Brush the breads with melted butter
And sprinkle some coarse salt for extra flavour
Once done, enjoy while hot!