Milk bread is something I've wanted to make for a long time - and I finally had time to test a wonderful, sweet version with delicious pistachio cream. The combination of airy and juicy milk bread, together with creamy, sweet and crunchy pistachio cream is absolutely irresistible 🙂 PS. In this recipe I use a stand mixer!
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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Spread an even layer of the pistachio cream over the entire dough and leave approx. 1 cm of the edges without.
- 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.
- 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.
- When the rising time is almost finished, take out the bread tin and preheat the oven to 175ºC top and bottom heat.
- 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.
- 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.
