HOKAIDO
JAPANESE
MILK
BREAD

GO STRAIGHT TO THE RECIPE

When I was a kid and first went to school, so very long ago, like 70 OMG years, the bigger kids quickly taught me some very naughty things. In those days bread was delivered daily, except for Saturdays and Sundays and was left in a tin or bread crock at your front door. Walking home from school was always an adventure from stealing mandarins or any other fruit that might have been in season, to terrorizing old spinsters living alone in huge houses, to God only knows what else. My fave was eating out the middle of the bread loaf and putting it back in the tin, so the the broken end was hidden. You had to be quite sneaky, but despite knowing that there would be cake when we made it home to Grans, starving hungry after school, that squishy white bread was irresistible. Those where the days when a neighbour could give you a halfhearted belting and your parents would confirm that it was well deserved, even make you give up your pocket money for the equivalent cost of what you had stolen! I often think that kids of today just miss out on so much adventure being dropped to and picked up from school…maybe an old person’s point of view?

Having worked with several fantastic bakers over the years I have learned not to take yeast too seriously. One who was always late for work thought nothing of shocking the yeast with hot water to get it going and didn’t take much notice of proving times despite having commercial proving boxes and fantastic commercial ovens with plumbed in adjustable steam.

As a result, I’m slightly blasé with bread making and yeast thinking there is always some sort of save at my fingertips. However, to get that squishy soft bread texture of the Hokaido bread, in a perfect square loaf this is a bread that requires every proving time to be observed.

I find this restaurant obsession of making round Japanese sandos wasteful/ridiculous…I mean, just how many buckets of fresh breadcrumbs can a restaurant use? We do cut the crusts and they make excellent breadcrumbs.

Domestic ovens have come ahead in leaps and bounds but I find making 2 small tins is better than than a double sized tin. If you’re lucky enough to have steam with your oven refer to your manual a little initial burst of 5-10% steam for 5 minutes is always useful.

AO 23 OCTOBER 2023