~2–3 hrs proof · easy

Sweet Bread

Sweet Bread

A soft, rich sweet bread built on the same enriched dough I make for cinnamon rolls. Shaped into tight rounds and baked together, it pulls apart into a pillowy, golden loaf. My best sweet bread so far.

Dough

  • All-purpose flour — 440 g
  • Sugar — 60 g (up to 70 g for a sweeter loaf)
  • Salt — 6 g
  • Yeast — 7 g (1 packet)
  • Egg — 1
  • Milk — 240 ml (start with ~220 ml, adjust as needed)
  • Butter — 50 g, softened

Method

  1. Mix — warm milk (not hot) + yeast; add the sugar and egg; add flour + salt and mix to a dough.
  2. Knead 5–8 min, then add the butter slowly and knead until smooth. Aim for a light windowpane.
  3. First rise — cover and rest 1–1.5 hrs, until doubled.
  4. Shape — divide into ~60–80 g balls, shape tight and round, and nestle them together in a tin.
  5. Second rise — 45–60 min, until puffy.
  6. Bake — 170–175 °C for 28–30 min. The moment it comes out, brush with butter or milk and drape a cloth over it for 10 minutes. That traps the steam and softens the crust into the soft, brittle bakery finish I'm after.

Shaping for height — the three-dome loaf

The taller, lighter version (the one with the three domes on top in the photos):

  • Take a 250 g flour dough and divide it into 3 equal pieces.
  • Roll each piece out thin with a rolling pin, then roll it up into a tight spiral and set the three side by side in the tin.
  • Baked together, they rise into a taller loaf with a lighter crumb and that bakery-style three-dome top.

The shaping trick that changed everything: roll each piece really thin — aim for ~5–7 mm. That thinness is what builds the long gluten sheets, so the baked crumb pulls apart into strands, like shokupan, instead of a dense crumb. It's the single biggest improvement I've made to the texture.

Notes

  • Keep the dough soft and slightly tacky — don't over-flour.
  • Tight, smooth shaping is what gives that bakery pull-apart look.
  • Dial it rustic: the same dough with less sugar and butter bakes into a deeper-crusted, more rustic loaf (the darker one in the photos) — less rich, just as soft.