A City and a Loaf - Ultra Soft Cranberry Cream Cheese
For a while, I often had a thought that I had lived enough, as if I had already completed an entire lifetime. But I didn’t dare to share this with anyone, fearing that those who took it seriously would worry, while those who didn’t might dismiss it lightly. Since high school, I left the factory in the mountain valley and lived in many places I called home. More than a decade has passed, and it feels like these homes have segmented different phases of my life. Whenever I have free time, I look at the map, and every place I’ve stayed is often thousands of kilometers apart. Recently, I moved again, though not far, just from Zhuhai to Shenzhen. Yet, all my belongings required a box truck to transport. The previous time I moved from Beijing to Zhuhai, I shipped over 30 boxes via Debang Logistics. Before that, when I moved from Chengdu to Beijing, everything I owned fit into three boxes that came with my train ticket. I told my friend Sunny, who's far away in the U.S., that I never wanted to move again. She sent a goofy emoji and said, “Don’t even start. I have no idea how I’ll move all my stuff back to China from here.” When I left Zhuhai, there were people I wanted to thank and words I wanted to say, but in the end, I said nothing. I wanted to make a long goodbye look like a brief farewell. It’s not that I didn’t understand the importance of a proper goodbye; I just couldn’t help deceiving myself. Every move requires saying goodbye to many things, adapting to new local languages, and getting to know new delivery personnel from JD.com and SF Express. With every move, a part of my soul feels pulled into a black hole, as if lost in a void without time and space, never to be recovered. It’s said that in Shenzhen, many people move again and again. This time, I came to this city for bread—truly to make bread. I believe that with bread, everything will get better. Everyone will get better. May we all have a true home someday.
Ingredients
Steps
Pour 75g of boiling water into 50g of bread flour, stir quickly until smooth, and let cool to make tangzhong. Knead it with all dough ingredients (except butter and salt) until initial gluten forms.
Then add the softened butter and salt to the dough at room temperature and knead until gluten is fully developed.
Mix in the chopped dried cranberries and knead evenly.
Cover with plastic wrap and a damp cloth, and let rise at 30°C for about 50 minutes until dough doubles in size.
Divide into two equal parts, fold into pillow shapes, and let rest for 20 minutes.
Soften the cream cheese at room temperature, mix in sugar to create an even filling, and wrap it in the dough.
Roll the dough out, curve it into a neck-pillow shape, place on a baking tray, and let rise for 40-50 minutes until doubled in size.
Spray a little water on the surface, sift some bread flour on top, preheat the oven to 200°C top heat and 180°C bottom heat, and bake for about 16 minutes. The bread is quite large, so if your oven isn't particularly big, you may need to bake one at a time. Keep the second loaf in the fridge while waiting to bake.