Before BBA, I always thought of this bread as Hawaiian bread, but PR says that Hawaiians give credit for it to the Portuguese. This bread is made in one day, and is enriched with powdered milk, butter, shortening, and eggs, and flavored with sugar and extracts of lemon, orange, and vanilla.
This bread is begun as a sponge of flour, sugar, yeast, and water that ferments and foams for about an hour. To make the dough, you actually cream together the enrichments first, and then add in the sponge and bread flour. I've never creamed ingredients to make a bread dough before; usually butter is added near the end when the dough is mostly formed and the gluten has begun developing, since too much fat tends to get in the way of that important process. I think the sponge in this formula allows some gluten development to occur prior to the mixing of the dough. I kneaded the soft dough and set it in a bowl to rise for about 2 hours. Then I divided the dough in two, shaped the pieces into rounds, and placed them in pie pans. They proofed for a full 3 hours, and then I brushed them with an egg wash and baked them for about an hour.
I don't think my loaves ended up rising quite to the size they were meant to, even though I allowed them plenty of time. They didn't really fill the pie pans. However, the texture of the bread was very good and not at all dense. The flavor was excellent as well, and we really enjoyed sandwiches on this bread. It also made fabulous French toast.
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