With Alice Tran, a resident of California, the US

Vietnamese bread

Ingredients:

Levain starter:

- 100g bread flour (I use King Arthur, but you can change to bread flour with 13% protein)

- 200g strong starter

- 95g water

Mix everything well and leave to double in size.

Alice Tran

Second fermentation:

- 500g bread flour

- one chicken egg, and 260ml water

- 16g sugar

- 18g butter

- 9g salt

Mix all ingredients, then add the levain. Hand mix for 6 minutes, then use mixer for 10 minutes. Mix for no longer than 20 minutes until you can see a window pane of dough. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to rest.

Brush the dough with oil, and wrap it into a bundle. Let the dough rest for 3 hours.

Cut into nine pieces and roll each into a ball. Let rest for 15 minutes.

Roll each dough out into a triangle, then roll in tightly to make a bread roll. Keep in a warm place to raise double in size (about 2 hours). Press a finger to the dough, if it bounces back, then it's okay to bake.

Set your oven to 260 degrees Celsius. 

Place a tray in the second shelf from the top. Spray the dough with water before cutting a sharp line along the bun with a thin razor blade. Spray a second time and cut a second time with your razor blade and put the dough into oven. 

Bake for 10 minutes (do not open the oven during this time), from 11th minutes, lower the temperature to 221 degrees Celsius and look out for golden brown bread. Brush butter on the outside, or just let the bread cool on a rack. 

Good luck! VNS