Had to look that up. Here's a description from King Arthur Flour for anybody else who's out of the loop like me:

Tangzhong, an Asian technique for making soft, fluffy yeast bread, involves cooking a portion of the flour and liquid in the recipe into a thick slurry prior to adding the remaining ingredients. This pre-cooking accomplishes two positive things: it makes bread or rolls softer and more tender, and extends their shelf life.

And I never even knew the term until now, but I have looked at milk bread recipes.

King Arthur has lots of chatty info on their blog, if you haven't seen it yet.

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2018/07/23/how-to-convert-a-bread-recipe-to-tangzhong

TBH, it seem a bit fussy to me, but I'd probably try it once, at least.

Sadly my oven is broken right now, and I can't bake anything
😞

Thanks for the additional info, carol. I guess my real question is does it make a difference that you can actually discern. Seemed fussy to me too, but if the bread is really great then maybe it's worth it!

I guess if your goal is a soft, fluffy result, than yes. I'm thinking rolls and white bread, which is what that blog suggests. I could see hamburger buns & similar being appropriate.

I wonder if you can do it with whole wheat - maybe part whole wheat?l

I am wondering about that too. I made burger buns for the first time last week and they were good but they were more like a kaiser roll than a hamburger bun. Don't know if whole wheat would work - I've started using white whole wheat in my bread and to my tastebuds there isn't much of a difference between it and white flour.

I’ve made the KAF Japanese Milk Bread recipe several times. It makes 8 large rolls. The 2nd time I made them, I used white whole-wheat flour for half of the flour with no discernible difference. Just as fluffy and tender.

It’s an easy technique, and I really liked the end result. It’s hard to describe the texture. The rolls are soft, tender, but have some heft too. They’re not as airy as I’d expect. We really like them. They’re good as diner rolls or sandwich buns. I know that similar doughs are used for actually bread loaves too.

I'm not sure--I'd have to do a side by side test, but I think the cooking achieves a similar result to soaking, but in much less time. You get full hydration that way. "Slurry" is definitely a word for what you get if you soak refined flour. :)

Whole wheat does not lend itself easily to fluff, though it can be done, and it should always be soaked (mixed with the liquid and left for at least 8 hours). The finer the bran is ground the better. Too much bran will interfere with the rise, and the bran can actually cut the gluten strands, which is hard to recover from. Going half and half, as Shambo suggested, is a better idea if you want loft. Make sure you're using hard white wheat, which has more protein (which becomes gluten) than soft.

FWIW, I hardly ever use straight whole wheat, but usually mix it 1/2 & 1/2, or 1/4-1/3 ww to unbleached, for that very reason. I don't like to eat tough bread - my dental work won't let me.

Interesting! One of the reasons I love my bread recipe is that the loaves are soft and fluffy but still hold together for slicing (no dairy products in it.) One of the things I don't love about the recipe is that shelf life is only a very few short days and I don't always have freezer space for loaf #2. Burns me up when I have to toss part of it. I will look into this method and see how long the loaves stay good. Thank you!

2Many’s pictures reminded me of a method that is often used with tangzhong loaves and even other style bread loaves. Dividing the dough in two parts and putting the distinct lumps of dough into one loaf pan. That way the dough is baked at one time, but the individual sections can be separated once baking is completed. You end up with two mini loaves. So, one section could be eaten right away and another section could be frozen to protect its texture.

I've also made the King Arthur recipe a couple of times, and it's not as fussy as it seems. It does make a very light and fluffy loaf, so I liked it better as dinner rolls.

Shambo, that's a really good idea with the two mini loaves, I'm going to have to try that!

Annie

Is there an advantage to baking two loaves in one pan, or is it just an easy work around if one doesn't have half sized loaf pans?

Edie, do you have freezer space for the dough of the second loaf? Other than cooking the liquid into some flour instead of doing a preferment, I can't see that the Japanese milk bread is really that different from any enriched bread. The milk does a lot to give the tender crumb, and the egg lends support to the fluffy. Freezing the second loaf should do it.

It won't have the same fluff and sweetness, but sourdough keeps very well before staling. Mold is a different story and depends mostly on environmental factors.

Plllog, never thought about freezing the dough! I am absolutely going to give that a try. Bread is always better freshly baked anyway. By the time we're partway through loaf #2 it's not quite as good. Thank you!!

yes, and I have refrigerated and even frozen the dough. Have even adjusted my parker house roll recipe to employ this method .. I use a mix of 1/2 and 1/2 WWF a AP flour ... fluffier and lighter results too. By the time you do the separate rises, this just adds another tasty step. When my dough is ready to go ... I form them and freeze them on a sheet pan, then double bag the rolls in zip bags in the freezer after frozen. A good project for a nasty weather day ...

So much great information.. Thank you! 2Many that is exactly what I want my rolls to look like - they are beautiful. I am going to try this next time I make burger rolls. I wonder what the science behind Tangzhong is.

I got interrupted when I was looking up the science, but what I did see said something about the cooking gelatinizing the something of the flour as the main result of heating.

ediej1209 AL Zn 7, would you mind posting your recipe for bread. I love to bake bread and have been doing a lot of it recently. Am looking for the perfect loaf of bread. TIA

Several years ago I made Japanese Milk Bread and absolutely loved it. Darn it, now I want to make some.

Madonna

WalnutCreek, I wrote out a long post with the recipe for you but I'm not seeing it show up. If it still is floating in etherspace by tomorrow I will try to post it again. My fingers don't always behave so I had to edit some oopsies. So that may be why it disappeared.

Thanks a million, ediej1209. I don't see it either. Thank you for taking the time to type up; I sure do appreciate it. Hopefully, it will turn up. Will check again tomorrow.

Yes I too use the KAF Japanese Milk Bread recipe. It’s wonderful, love to serve to company. I make in my bread maker and bake rolls or loaf in oven. I never bake in the bread machine.

Tried to post again and it still doesn't show up anywhere but in my own activity log so I copied it here.

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I am going to post the recipe as I first started using it. For my taste, the bread was too sweet so in parentheses I will put what I use now.
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2 cups water - 110°-120°
3 Tablespoons sugar (1 slightly rounded Tablespoon)
1-1/2 Tablespoons Active Dry Yeast
1-1/2 teaspoons salt (slightly rounded)
1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
6 cups flour*
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Fit mixer with paddle.
Put water and sugar in mixer bowl, stir to dissolve sugar. Sprinkle yeast over and let sit until foamy, 5- 15 minutes (I stir slightly to get the yeast into the sugar water.) I find that 5 minutes is generally sufficient.
Add salt, oil and 3 cups of the flour. Mix very well.
Change from paddle to dough hook, on low, add the other 3 cups of flour. Once most of the flour is incorporated, raise mixer speed to medium and mix until it becomes a cohesive whole, with no flour on sides of bowl.
Turn out onto floured surface and knead 4-6 minutes, using the most minimum of flour possible, just enough to keep it from sticking to your hands.
Place in a LARGE greased bowl, turn once to grease all sides of dough, then cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.
After 1 hour, punch dough down and form into 2 loaves. Place in greased loaf pans, cover and let rise until dough crowns to a little over 1" above pan tops.
Preheat oven to 350°
Bake loaves for 25 - 30 minutes, if browning too quickly, cover loosely with foil after 18 minutes.
I let the loaves sit only for a minute or 2 in the pans then turn them onto a rack to cool. Let cool completely before cutting.
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*OK so here's the thing about flour. The original recipe called for All Purpose flour. I only use bread flour and just because I got silly and ordered a bunch of durum flour and need to use it before it goes bad, I actually substitute 1/2 cup of it for 1/2 cup of the bread flour. I am not scientific enough to know if that actually does anything to make the bread soft but still able to hold together when cut or not. If anyone here knows please feel free to chime in. If it really does make some kind of difference I will replenish my supply once it's gone. If it really serves no particular purpose I will go back to all bread flour. I probably have enough durum for 7 or 8 more batches

I apologize for hijacking the thread.

Don't apologize. I think it's great. But for some reason I cannot save it.

Edie, the second one did post, finally.

Jerzeegirl, what can't you save? Do you mean the heart save button? If so, your list might be full. You can always copy and save to your device. I saved Edie's recipe to my recipe app, but it's currently being revamped by the author, so I won't recommend that now. There's nothing like Word for saving recipes, though. :)

pillog, I think I finally figured it out. I think when I added my location and planting zone to my name yesterday, it wipe out my saved ideabooks. So I had to recreate another ideabook to be able to save. I only have word on my work computer which is only in the other room but I try not to turn it on on the weekend! I use a chromebook and it doesn't really have Word.

You can also save to Google Docs online in your Chromebook, and download it later for safekeeping if you like, or use one of the recipe apps that have an online (browser) interface as well.

I hope you didn't permanently lose your saves! If you can't find them, maybe customer service can help?

ediej, Durham flour is a high protein flour best suited to bread baking and pasta making. It is probably a bit higher in protein than your bread flour and could result in a chewier crumb. Mixed with bread flour, it is probably helping you get the fluffiness you like. Higher protein means more gluten and more potential for holding a nice rise, but may also make for more of a chew than a tender crumb, so if you used it solo, you would get a different result. With bread, there is no one right way -- the goal is to make what you like and perhaps to experiment with finding others.

Heating the proteins in flour changes them permanently. Think about cooking an egg -- the heat changes it from a runny mess to a firm structure, even rubbery if you take it that far, and you can't go back to the beginning. That is what the Tangzhong method is doing -- changing the protein structure in that heated flour. Moisture activates gluten, so the science behind it is probably some of both -- heat and moisture. I understand the science, but I haven't tried it yet -- I keep meaning to when the boys are here, but we get busy and I forget -- or I make their favorite dinner rolls because they are easy to fall back on. My oldest is going to be here next month and no holiday dinners to plan, so maybe that will be a good time to try it.

pillog: there were only two saves that I can remember (and I found them and saved them again) - your email teaching me sourdough, and an instant pot recipe for cheesecake! I just added the one above. So many recipes, so little time!

lascatx, thank you for the explanation of what durum does. Yes the bread is fluffy-but-slightly-chewy which is what I was working toward when I first found the original recipe. I only added the durum because I was ordering flour from KAF one day when they were having one of their "buy so much and get free shipping" which when I looked at my total + shipping and found if I added a couple bags of durum it worked out almost the same. I think I was thinking about making my own pasta. Silly me, ain't never gonna happen. But it has become a "happy accident" I reckon! I also have a recipe for a 3-flour quick foccacia (AP, semolina, durum,) I believe from Macaroni Grill, that is pretty good. And now I know durum's purpose it makes more sense. Thank you again!