Milk Bread

Milk Bread, also known as shokupan, is soft, tender, and delicious. How delicious?

More Delicious than Squishmallows

Do you remember The Great Before? It seemed that no one ate bread anymore. Low-carb, no-carb, and bread is bad.

It was sad.

Then, the pandemic came along and suddenly everyone was baking and consuming mass quantities of homemade banana bread and sourdough. Imagine: everyone was making, scoring, and eating sourdough loaves!

Now, thankfully, bread is back. I never totally stopped eating bread but I certainly ate more of it during the lockdown years. And I don’t regret it. Let’s call it comfort carbs.

Because I am a longtime challah baker, I know my way around a yeasty bread bowl. I kept seeing milk bread on social media but had never made it. People were obsessed!

This Asian-style bread intrigued me. I decided to try it.

Plush

Milk bread is sometimes called shokupan or Japanese milk bread. It is soft, fluffy, and tender. The crust is golden brown and glossy.

The interior is pillowy, plush, and deliciously cotton-like. It’s the Squishmallow of the bread world.

By the way, does everyone own a Squishmallow yet? My twenty-something daughter has several. Sometimes I “borrow” one from her room when I’m watching TV.

It is an aptly named squeezable bundle of polyester fiber and spandex joy.

The inventor of Squishmallows, Jonathan Kelly, was inspired by a trip he made to Japan. He saw the “kawaii” or “cuteness culture” and plush toys that were popular there. After he returned to California, Squishmallows were born.

You could say Squishmallows are the milk bread of the plush toy world.

Shokupan

Shokupan means “food bread” in Japanese and has a murky past. Did it arrive in Japan with Dutch and Portuguese explorers in the 1500s and 1600s, or was it invented by a British-Japanese baker in the 1800s? It’s not clear.

What do we know? It's soft. And addicting to eat.

Milk bread is made with just a few ingredients: flour, yeast, milk, salt, sugar, and butter. You can bake all kinds of bread with these basic ingredients. But the technique is what sets milk bread apart from the rest.

It starts with either yudane or tangzhong.

Yudane and Tangzhong

Yudane (a Japanese term) is a water roux made by combining equal parts boiling water and flour. Tangzhong (a Chinese term) is also a water roux but is cooked in a saucepan. The Chinese-style roux has a 1:5 flour-to-water ratio.

Both methods yield a sticky, gelatinous blob. This blob is cooled, then added to the yeast mixture. The point of the water roux? Moisture is added to the finished product.

As a result, the bread is fluffy, tender, and squishy.

I prefer the tangzhong method after having tried both ways. The cooked water roux adds a taste and texture that I happen to like. Try both and see what you think.

Lessons Learned

• Do not walk away from the saucepan when making the tangzhong. The flour-water mixture heats up fast and will scorch if you have the burner on too high or don’t whisk it continually. You’ve been warned.
• Don’t freak out if the dough seems overly sticky. This is a wetter dough than many bread doughs. Add additional flour to the mixer a tablespoon at a time until the dough just starts to pull away from the bowl cleanly.
• Make a double batch. Milk bread is very addicting to eat. You might be sad if you only make one batch. I was.

Hat Tips

This recipe, like most that I feature, is inspired by the many recipes that I find on Pinterest, Instagram, and Google searches. I combine bits and pieces of several recipes to suit my needs. Many thanks go to Chopstick Chronicles and Hungry Huy for their shokupan bread recipes!

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