Portuguese Sweet Bread

aka Hawaiian bread aka the bread that apparently makes this sandwich delicious:

Well, people -- I'll make a vegetarian version of that sandwich and let you know what I think upon the completion of this bread.  First, all I can say is that looks like a bun.  Portuguese sweet bread/ Hawaiian bread is way darker than that.

Okay, this is a one-day bread.  THANK GOD.  It's so annoying to stretch bread baking over days and days.  But, my boy's not here -- therefore, I'm baking like a fucking fiend.  Get ready, friends.  And by friends, I mean literal friends, because you may or may not be at the receiving end of this bread shiz.

SO.

Sponge: flour + sugar + yeast.

+ water.  It's super cloudy and rainy out today.  So the flash was going AT IT.  Which means really whitewashed pictures.  Additionally, there was a bomb threat at school today.  I mean, a bomb in the rain?  Let's be a little more practical, bombers.  Please.  Also, evacuations in the rain aren't exactly nice.

All stirred up (and looking like a sun!), this sits for 60 to 90 minutes while I pretend to work on a paper.  OMG.  Drafts for papers three weeks before the paper's due make no sense to me.  I mean, srsly.  I guess I get to finish early, you know, if I was a good student and not out of town last weekend.  Oh, the pressures of being a PhD student who wants to be an intellectual rockstar at some point in her life.

After an hour!  All bubbly and crazy!  It kind of reminds me of something delicious, but idk what.  Maybe some cooking sugar?  Or marshmallow creme, which I haven't had in forever.  But I need to stop eating sweets or something.

SO.

Sugar + salt + butter + shortening.  I was supposed to use powdered milk here because "The most distinctive aspect of this bread, besides the softness and the shape, is the flavor imparted by the powdered milk.  I have tried making versions with whole milk and buttermilk, but once you get the taste of the powdered-milk version in your mind, no other taste will do."  Peter talks about bread like it's a seductive woman.  Once you go powdered-milk, you don't go back.  OH.  The softness and the shape of this bread.  HOT.

Well, Peter, I prefer the liquidy deliciousness of evaporated milk.  Thick, luscious, and sensuously potent, this highly concentrated wet dream will force you to push every other milk out of your fucking mind.

Plus powdered milk is like eight dollars for this huge box I will never use.

+ egg + orange extract + lemon extract + vanilla extract.

+ flour + sponge.



This song = my life.

Stirred and kneaded and ready to sit for two hours.  And by two hours I mean an hour on "warm" in the oven.  I've realized that this process is amazing.  It's like speeding up time.  Kind of like TV on a DVR, which quite possibly the closest thing to time travel we currently have access to.

So, after two-hours-that-was-really-an-hour, the dough doubled!  Yay warm setting on the oven!

Look how cute!  This bakes in a pie pan!  But, for now it sits for two to three hours.  See, this timing I can get behind.  Because I can legit go to class and come home and bake this shit.  She rockin' that shit like . . . there's nothing I can say.

Ow ow!  With a quick egg wash with quite possibly the coolest pastry brush ever (thanks, Benz!), this goes into the oven for 50 to 60 big ones.  Like Benjamins.  I need to come up with a slang term for minutes that's as badass as names for money.  So I can be a Young Money millionaire.  Or I can marry Drake, which I'm sure would put me in the running for that title.  PS, PEOPLE:

Most amazing video EVER?!  Yes.

Holy ef.  This looks and smells delicious.  AND IT'S NOT BURNT.  Sits for 90 minutes.

Yay!  My oven worked with me.  We are no longer frenemies.  And I made some tasty chile relleno casserole with it yesterday, too!  Perhaps this is the start of a lovely future together.  Oven, do me right, please.

I would give this 4/5.  Idk why it doesn't get the other point, but whatever.  It's here.  <3