@ElsieD I am more than happy to share my recipe. It is an amalgam of various Pain de Mie recipes I have attempted over the years.
I use a 13" Pullman Pan with a lid to bake the bread in, but have used a 10" pan with a lid, and just reduced all the ingredients by one third: It came out well.
Pre-heat your oven to 250c (mine is fan-assisted, so that is probably 270c in a non fan-assisted oven, I think)
Ingredients:
15g Unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
30g Fresh yeast (as fresh yeast is extremely scarce here at the moment, I now use 17g of Dried Active Yeast)
750g Strong white flour
15g Salt
75ml Full-fat milk
450ml Water, boiled and cooled to 99F/37c
If using the fresh yeast, rub it and the butter into the flour. Then add to your mixer bowl, with the salt, water and milk. Mix at speed 2 for 5 minutes, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
If using the Dried Active Yeast, add 50ml of the water to it, and leave for 5 minutes until frothy. Rub the butter into the flour, then add to the mixer bowl with the remaining water, milk and salt. Mix at speed 2 for 5 minutes, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Empty the dough into a proving bowl, cover with cling-film, and leave to prove until doubled in size. (this takes only 1 hour in my kitchen, at the moment)
Once proved to your satisfaction, knock back, shape to fit the Pullman Pan on a lightly floured surface (I don't stretch or fold, or whatever; I just lift the mass into the Pan, and push down to have an even surface of dough in the Pan). Cover with the lid, and check every 5 minutes or so, to see the extent of the rise. (I let it rise to about 10mm from the lid, then I set my timer for 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes is up, I reduce the oven temperature to 220c, and put in the Pan. Cook for 30 minutes. Once the 30 minutes are up, remove from the oven, decamp the gorgeous loaf from the Pan, and take lots of crappy photos (well, that's what I do).
Enjoy ElsieD...
