Braided cranberry almond condensed milk bread

Condensed milk is known for providing baked goods with amazing crust color, tenderness, moisture, and flavor. With all those wonderful qualities I figured why not try to incorporate it into my bread dough and see what happens? Well I’ll tell you what happened, the most amazing condensed milk bread ever! Keep scrolling along to see why.

Ingredients (makes 3 mini or 1 large loaf):

2 1/2 cups bread flour
2 tablespoons margarine/butter
1 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoon condensed milk
2 tablespoon sugar
2/3 cup water warm
2 teaspoon yeast
1/3 cup dried cranberries
3 tablespoons sliced almonds

Let’s get rolling:

1. Place the milk and water in a medium bowl and sprinkle 1 teaspoon of sugar along with the yeast. While the yeast is foaming, combine the bread flour and the remaining sugar in a large bowl.

2. Add the yeast mixture, margarine, and condensed milk to the bowl of flour and stir to combine. Then add in the cranberries and almonds. Knead the dough for 8 – 10 minutes until elasticy, then cover it with a tea towel and let it rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

3. When the dough is done rising, split it into 9 dough balls for three small buns OR 3 dough balls for one large loaf.

4. Gently roll the pieces into 13″ long logs.

5. Weave the logs together to form a braid and tuck the ends under the loaf to seal.

6. You can either place the loaf directly on a baking sheet or place it in a loaf pan. Cover the loaf with a tea towel and let it rise for 15 minutes before baking.

7. Bake at 325F for 20-30 minutes until golden brown.

The buns we made were perfectly moist, soft, and sweet at the same time because of the condensed milk. Lil’ bun said they were comparable to the result to the ones we make using the tangzhong method so maybe we unlocked a secret here! We’ll probably try to make these buns again some time without the condensed milk just to make sure it was PURELY because of it that provided us with melt in your mouth textured bread.But until then I’ll be enjoying these delicious little guys so bye bye for now!