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The Bakery 100 · make it at home

Shokupan (Japanese milk bread)

4 hr, 40 min hands-on · 1 large loaf

The cloud-soft, square Japanese loaf, made with a cooked flour paste (yudane) so it stays tender for days. Toast it thick.

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The real one

You need

• Yudane: 50 g bread flour (1/3 cup + 1 tbsp) and 50 ml boiling water (3 1/2 tbsp)
• Dough: 300 g bread flour (2 1/2 cups)
• 30 g sugar (2 1/2 tbsp)
• 6 g fine salt (1 tsp)
• 5 g instant yeast (1 1/2 tsp)
• 15 g milk powder (2 tbsp)
• 190 ml whole milk, cool (3/4 cup + 1 tbsp)
• 1 tbsp honey
• 30 g soft unsalted butter (2 tbsp)

How to make it

1. Yudane (5 min plus cooling): Stir the boiling water into the 50 g flour to a stiff paste. Cover and cool completely (or refrigerate overnight).
2. Dough (20 min): Knead the yudane with the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, milk powder, milk and honey 6 minutes. Add the butter and knead 10 minutes more, until a piece stretches thin enough to see light through.
3. Rise (1 hr): Cover and rise until doubled.
4. Shape (10 min): Divide into 3 equal pieces. Roll each into an oval, fold the sides in to the width of your tin, then roll up like a carpet. Set the three rolls seam-down side by side in a buttered 1 kg (9 x 4 in) Pullman tin.
5. Proof (50 min to 1 hr): Proof until the dough is 1 cm below the rim (for a square loaf, slide the lid on now).
6. Bake (30 min): Bake at 190C (375F) for 30 to 35 minutes, until deep golden (internal 93C/200F). Tap it out at once and cool on its side.
7. Serve: Slice 3 cm thick, toast, and spread with good butter and jam.

Tips

• Knead until it windowpanes: that's the shreddable crumb.
• Cool fully before slicing or it squashes.

Chef Amazing's own home version of shokupan, in our words; not any bakery's recipe.