White Cloud Loaf ❤️ Nama Shokupan ❤️ Old Dough Method

I made egg tarts today and had two egg whites left over, and then I spotted Chef A-Tao's White Cloud Loaf which calls for 60g of egg whites! Perfect timing to give it a try. Big thanks to Chef A-Tao for the formula ❤️.

🍞 Ingredients: (One 450g Pullman loaf pan)

🎈 Old dough (pâte fermentée): Milk 108g, sugar 10g, instant dry yeast 1.5g, yogurt 27g, bread flour 140g.

🎈 Main dough: Egg whites 60g, bread flour 130g, instant dry yeast 2g, salt 3g, sugar 17g, butter 27g.

🍞 Instructions:

1️⃣ Mix all the old dough ingredients together until no dry flour remains, cover with plastic wrap, and ferment at around 28°C room temperature for about 90 minutes.

2️⃣ Tear the fermented old dough into small pieces and combine with all main dough ingredients except the butter. Mix on low speed, then medium speed, and back to low speed until it pulls a thick membrane. Add the softened room-temperature butter and continue mixing to the full windowpane stage with a thin, translucent membrane.

3️⃣ In the original recipe, the dough is rounded for a first bulk fermentation, then divided into 3 pieces, rested, shaped, and placed in the pan. Since I had to head out soon, I went straight to dividing into 3 pieces, giving a brief bench rest, rolling out, coiling, and panning for a single proof until the pan was 90% full. Turning the double proof into a single proof was the only change I made.

4️⃣ Bake at 190°C on the lower-middle rack for about 32 minutes, tenting with aluminum foil after about 8 minutes once browned. Adjust according to how your oven runs.

5️⃣ Right out of the oven, brush the hot crust with a thin layer of melted butter.