100 Things I Cooked in Japan - Banana Tea Bread
What? Something other than bagels? No, couldn't be.
Recipe: taken from my Japanese all-seasons cook book.
Ingredients: bread flour, sugar, dry yeast, salt, milk tea, wheat flour, butter, and a banana.
Making Time: Longer than it should have taken. The plan is for about an hour and a half plus baking time. It took me at least two as things outright refused to rise.
Yield: I was too lazy to fight the dough so I made nine small loafs and one reasonably sized one. The recipe calls for twelve small cookie-sized loaves.
What went wrong? I'm thinking the milk tea may have been the culprit, here. The recipe calls for 濃いめのミルクティ which is literally 'dark milk tea.' I picked up some milk tea from the store that had the previously mentioned Japanese on the side, but adding that to four Japanese tablespoons of sugar seemed like not such a great idea. I'm thinking next time I might follow the little star that explains milk tea if you aren't using the fancy branded stuff. It seems to contain less sugar than the stuff you buy in bottles.
Things I learned:
- I operate better on a 'cook until things look done' basis than a 'cook for set-amount-of-time' basis.
- Bread dough, even if it's not quite at the right consistency, let's go of things better when you twist it until it lets go of its own volition.