The key to making fresh bread that stays moist for days! You’ll adore these if you like the pricey, silky, cotton-soft bread from Chinese bakers. My children gush about them endlessly. Even though it requires more labor than regular white bread, I promise it will be worth it! However, if you don’t want to wait, make sure the water roux is at room temperature before adding it to the dough. Water roux functions best when chilled overnight. It’s quite moist to deal with the dough. The kneading can be done more easily in a mixer.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 30 mins |
| Additional Time: | 10 hrs |
| Total Time: | 10 hrs 50 mins |
| Servings: | 20 |
| Yield: | 2 loaves |
Ingredients
- ½ cup water
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- ¼ cup butter
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
- ¾ cup warm water
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- ⅓ cup white sugar
- 3 tablespoons instant dry milk powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons melted butter, divided
Instructions
- To make the water roux, bring 1/2 cup of water to a boil in a small saucepan, and stir in 1 tablespoon of sugar and the butter, mixing to dissolve the sugar. Place 1 cup of flour in a heatproof bowl, pour the boiling liquid over the flour, and whisk it well to remove lumps and transform the flour into smooth paste. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
- The next day, bring the water roux to room temperature. In the work bowl of an electric stand mixer, stir the yeast with 3/4 cup of warm water, and let it stand until a creamy layer of foam forms on the surface, 5 to 10 minutes. Add 3 cups of flour, 1/3 cup of sugar, dry milk powder, salt, and egg. Scoop all the water roux by spoonfuls into the mixing bowl, and let the machine knead the dough on low speed to thoroughly combine the ingredients, about 2 minutes. Increase the mixer speed to medium and knead until the dough is soft and smooth, about 8 more minutes.
- Turn the dough out into a greased bowl, cover lightly with a cloth, and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down the dough.
- Grease 2 8×4 inch loaf pans.
- Working on a floured surface, cut the dough in half, and form each half into a loaf shape. Place the dough in the prepared loaf pans, cover lightly with a cloth, and let rise until doubled, about 1 more hour.
- Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake the loaves in the preheated oven until the tops are lightly golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove the bread from the pans, and brush loaves with melted butter while still warm.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 139 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 24 g |
| Cholesterol | 17 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 4 g |
| Saturated Fat | 2 g |
| Sodium | 146 mg |
| Sugars | 5 g |
| Fat | 3 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
This is the most perfect bread! I’ve tried other Asian roux recipes in the past with disappointing results. This is a fast and simple recipe and makes beautiful small loaves of sweet and soft bread!
This was fantastic, absolutely delicious. I admit that I added more water to the roux over others’ suggestion. I also had no active dry yeast, so I added my instant yeast to all the other ingredients and warmed my water to 120°F. I followed Caroline Marvin’s suggestions of the rolling and folding to get more of the texture in the bread. Rose beautifully. Baked perfectly. Made a loaf and a pan of rolls. Husband thought it needed a bit more salt. I used unsalted butter, so next time—and there will definitely be a next time and a next,…—I’ll brush with salted instead. Thank you so much! Just a beautiful recipe.
Religiously adhere to the steps. The bread slow to proved and the end result is a dense bread. Nevertheless it tasted nice and kids loves them. Shall improvise in the next attempt
WOW! What a delicious loaf! Soft, moist and pillowy, just as everyone said! I was not prepared for it to be so amazing! DH and I have almost devoured one loaf already! I made an error that resulted in my dough being too wet; and my loaves sunk. Not the highest loaf I’ve ever made, but certainly the softest! Can’t wait to make it again!
Delicious!! I did change one part b/c of one of the reviews. I didn’t bother waiting until the next day with the roux. I just waited until it cooled off some and then continued on. Absolutely delicious!! Fantastic soft texture and sweet. Which for my taste is why this only gets 4 stars. It was just about 2 steps on the too sweet side. I will definitely make this again, just cut down slightly on the sugar to where it’s a sweet hint, but not overwhelming.
Made several times already with this. Though the roux was not “paste”, with the exact portion bread turned out very good. My family all love this bread.
Gave the second loaf to my neighbor, and their 1 year old picky eater son LOVED the bread.
I have made this in bread and it comes out so good , so soft and fluty it is worth the time. Use fasting acting yeast put on one side of the bool salt on the other side. Use cool water this will take longer to proof , your bread will taste better . Fast proof less flavor . I cut back on the butter and add 2 tablespoons cooking oil and add 1/4teaspoon more yeast. enriched dough needs more yeast in it, I use fast acting yeast . after the first proof punch down the dough, shape the dough ,let rise and back. with any bread that has eggs ,butter milk, you will need more yeast . I put butter ,sugar in the bowl add hot water stir with a fork until all mixed up then add the flour ,stir with fork all comes together .
I made this in a bread machine and didn’t follow directions exactly and it still turned out my best loaf ever. What a great technique! This is my new go-to.
Excellent! I followed the instructions exactly and I was really impressed. Big thank you. I will make this often,
Great taste and texture. I cut the portions back to 10 to make buns for lunches, no other changes were made. Thanks for the recipe. #AllrecipesAllstarsCanada #ChineseNewYear
This recipe is definitely a keeper! All I had was a small hand mixer so I used that to make the roux the night before. I refrigerated it over night and brought it out in the morning to warm up. I made the yeast mixture as per the directions all though I took about a tsp. of the sugar from the dry ingredients and mixed that in with the yeast and water. Make sure your water is hot enough (around 110 degrees) or your yeast will take a long time to act. Since I have a wimpy mixer I added the proofed yeast to the roux and mixed that up. Then I added the egg and 1/4 cup of milk (since I didn’t have any dry milk powder) then the rest of the dry ingredients slowly until my mixer was about to seize up. I dumped the remaining dry ingredients on my bread board and turned the semi mixed dough out on top of the dry ingredients and kneaded all of the remaining dry ingredients in to the dough. It took about 10 minutes and the dough was smooth and elastic. Covered the dough in a greased bowl with a damp dishtowel, and set the bowl in a couple of inches of hot water in my sink. After an hour it had raised to at least double, so I turned it back out on a lightly floured bread board, cut the dough in two and shaped two round loaves which I put on a parchment paper covered baking sheet and covered again with a damp towel. I let it raise another hour, removed the towel, and baked for 30 minutes. AWESOME!!!!
I made this recipe exactly as written. The roux is firm, like play dough. My rising time was doubled from what they suggest. I made buns, and got 20 out of one batch. They are so soft and “squishy” as my son in law says. Will make this recipe again!
I followed the exact recipe without adding extra water for water roux except I didn’t refrigerate over night. The water roux looked like a dough ball but the bread turned out fine and tasty. I also used a bread machine to make this bread. It tastes lighter and airier than other breads recipes that I tried from my bread machine booklet. I have a bigger bread machine and this recipe made one nice big loaf. I used the “basic course” and “medium crust” on the machine. I feel medium crust is a little too brown on this bread so will try lighter crust setting next time. I usually like to add some kind of toppings on the bread to eat but I didn’t need to add anything on the this bread. It is a little sweet and soft by itself. I will definitely make dinner rolls with this recipe next time.
I made half the recipe. 1/3 cup of water instead of 1/4 for the roux. I followed the recipe as mentionned. Mixed it about 10 minutes in KA. The weather was quite hot today 31°C and it took a couple of hours for first rise and same for second rise. I baked it in a gas oven and it turned out perfect. Very light and tasty. Thanks!!!!!
Agreed about the roux being too thick. Added a bit more water and added the paste a little at a time. Used regular (non rapid rise) yeast and read on another post that you should give it a second rise. Worked fine. First rise pretty slow. The dough was super wet, as mentioned. I think the people who added a lot of water to get back to a true roux state would have an unworkable dough and might want to consider adding a bit more flour to the recipe. I was making pulled pork so I made it into rolls. Used a 9X13-ish square pan and divided the dough equally. They kept the outline of the rolls, but I had to cut each one. Did a couple in ball form on another pan and spread a bit too much but rose well. Again, a little more flour might make it just right for individual rolls. It was amazing with the pulled pork. The sweet bread was a nice foil for the smoky pork. Will certainly make this recipe again.
I let it rise once and punched it down. Divided it into 3 loaves, froze one for later, baked one, and made “hot pockets” with the third. I cut it into 8 pieces and rolled out sections then stuffed it with Turkey dinner leftovers. Four of them were frozen for later and 4 cooked until golden brown. Mmmmmm
I am not a yeast-baker (yet!), but the bread turned out great! I don’t have a mixer with hook, so I did hand-kneading. I can’t wait to make French toast with it :-).
Will definitely make again. I did have to double the water and butter in the first step to get it to mix into a paste. Also, it rises but never gets to a normal dough consistency. Just let it be like that and bake it anyways and it turns out perfect!
I have been making bread for about 40 years – this is, by far, the best white bread recipie ever! It produces a loaf that is extremely tender and stays fresh for a much longer time. Can hardly wait for the grandsons to pass judgement. They like there bread ‘soft’ Nana.
Excellent bread! I followed this to the letter, except I took another reviewer’s advice, and just went ahead with the roux still warm, rather than chilling it overnight. Also, I found the 1/2 cup of boiling water was not nearly enough- I mean, it was impossible to even whisk that way. So I boiled another 1/2 of water, and that did the trick. The dough rose beautifully the first time, and was plenty to make two loaves. After the second rise, it filled the two pans nicely. It baked up beautifully, and tastes delicious! We all really enjoyed it, and I will definitely be making it again. Thanks for sharing 🙂