Milk Bread with Pistachio Cream

Ingredients

• 400 g plain white flour
• 125 g sugar
• 40 g butter
• 2 ½ dl whole milk
• 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
• 3 tsp dry yeast for sweet baking
• ¼ tsp salt
• 220 g pistachio cream
• 2 tbsp condensed milk
• 1 pinch pistachios

Method

1. Mix flour, sugar, vanilla sugar and salt in a kitchen bowl. Next, heat the milk over a low heat until it is lukewarm. Lift it off the plate and stir in dry yeast.
2. Turn the stand mixer on low speed (1 of 10 levels) while adding the milk mixture in a thin, even stream. Let it knead for 1 minute before turning up the level 2
3. The dough should be kneaded for approx. 7 minutes. It should release the sides of the bowl and be nice and smooth. Afterwards, add room temperature butter and knead the dough for a further 7-10 minutes on continued level 2 until you can take the gluten test: take a small handful of the dough and gently stretch it to a thin film that light can see through. If it breaks straight away or feels too tight, the dough should be kneaded a little more.
4. Shape the dough into a ball and let it rise in a large bowl with a towel over it. I put it in the oven at 50º C with top and bottom heat, for approx. 1.5 hours. The dough should rise to more than double its size.
5. Lightly knead the dough when it has risen, and sprinkle some flour on the counter before rolling it out to approx. 30×40 cm large square.
6. Spread an even layer of the pistachio cream over the entire dough and leave approx. 1 cm of the edges without.
7. Roll as tightly as you can lengthwise into a nice roll. Sprinkle a little flour on a sharp knife and the top of the roll, and cut in half lengthwise in the middle.
8. With the pistachio filling side up, twist each end up and down 3-4 times, so that you get a braid. Pinch the ends together. Grease a loaf tin and put the dough in it. Raise in the oven at 50º C for a further 45 minutes.
9. When the rising time is almost finished, take out the bread tin and preheat the oven to 175ºC top and bottom heat.
10. Bake in the middle of the oven for approx. 24-27 minutes. Feel free to check with a skewer in the middle of the bread - it should come out dry.
11. Cool the bread tin on a wire rack for at least 10-15 minutes before removing it from the tin. You can then brush a good layer of sweetened condensed milk on top as a glaze and top with chopped pistachios. The bread is easiest to cut into slices when it's hot or warm.