Step 1 / 7
mix
milk at 105°F, no hotter
warm milk + sugar + instant yeast + flour + salt, stirred to a shaggy mass with no dry flour left. Keep the salt away from the undissolved yeast for the first few seconds only — dumped directly onto a warm slurry it draws water out of the cells and slows the rise. Above about 120°F the milk kills the yeast outright, which is the one failure this recipe cannot recover from.