Portuguese Sweet Bread, 1st Tweak

As a follow-up to Saturday's attempt at Portuguese sweet bread, I tweaked the original formula to:

     Sponge

          14.3%     bread flour (King Arthur)

            3.2%     turbinado sugar

            1.6%     instant yeast

          25.4%     water

     Dough

          16  %     turbinado sugar    

           2.5%     salt

          24  %     powdered milk

         15   %     butter

         21   %     eggs

         85.7%     bread flour (King Arthur)

         16   %     water

           1.5%     molasses

           1.5%     honey

I cooked one loaf in a covered Dutch oven (left, below)--which has the effect of trapping steam rising from the dough and allowing the crust to cook more slowly--and the other loaf directly on our Fibrament baking stone:

I baked both loaves at 350°F (177°C) for 50 minutes, which was a bit too long since the bottoms burned. After 30 minutes of baking, I removed the cover from the Dutch oven. The Dutch oven loaf had a slightly lighter crust than the free-standing loaf, but they were otherwise similar in appearance and taste.

After this tweak of the formula, it turns out husband and I missed the taste of the flower waters and vanilla extract in the original formula. And I overdid it with the powdered milk and the salt: the first slice of bread tastes good, but in the second and third slices down the hatch the powdered milk and salt tastes accretes to an unpleasant level on the palate.