Nitrate & Nitrite Free Classic Milk Bread

Soft, pillowy, and impossibly tender, this milk bread is the kind of loaf that makes you want to tear off a piece before it even fully cools. The secret is the tangzhong — a simple cooked paste of bread flour and whole milk that gets folded into the dough and gives the finished loaf its signature cloud-like crumb. From there, the dough gets enriched with egg, butter, and a touch of sugar, so every slice has a subtle sweetness and a richness that plain sandwich bread just can't match. For anyone avoiding nitrates and nitrites, this recipe is a genuinely clean option — every single ingredient is a whole, unprocessed pantry staple with nothing cured, preserved, or processed in sight. No deli meat, no packaged shortcuts, just flour, milk, butter, egg, yeast, sugar, and salt doing exactly what they're supposed to do. The four-roll shaping method gives the loaf beautiful definition and an even rise, and that golden egg-wash finish makes it look like it came straight out of a bakery window. Let it cool the full thirty minutes before slicing — the crumb is worth the wait.

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