Japanese pullman-style milk bread — square loaf, crustless-soft, made with tangzhong roux and milk. The country's daily white bread.
Bread arrived in Japan via Yokohama after the 1859 port opening. Uchimi Hyokichi learned baking from a Frenchman and began making bread in Yokohama around 1860; Robert Clarke opened the Yokohama Bakery (c.1862-1865) serving foreign residents with British-style mountain-shaped and square loaves, the business later taken over by Uchiki Hikotaro (today's Uchiki Pan, Japan's oldest surviving bakery). The Pullman-loaf shape (square pan with lid) was adopted in Meiji era; tangzhong (yudane) technique is documented widespread by 1950s commercial bakeries.
Standard Japanese supermarket shokupan is sold as 4-mai (4 thick slices), 5-mai, 6-mai, 8-mai per loaf — the 4-mai for breakfast, 8-mai for sandwiches. Centre the Maru-Ichi tin: a 1-kin loaf is officially 340-360g. Trust the weight.
Pure white square loaf, 12cm tall, sliced thick (4 cuts to a loaf is standard, 6 for sandwiches). Tears in cottony strands. Subtly sweet from milk and sugar, rich from butter, no sour notes. Eaten toasted with butter or as fluffy katsu-sando bread. Stays soft 3 days.
Tangzhong/yudane is the trick: cooking 1 part flour with 5 parts liquid to 65°C gelatinizes starch, then this paste enters the main dough. Gelatinized starch holds water in the crumb — the loaf stays soft for days where a normal pullman dries by day two.
Variations
Hokkaido milk bread uses Hokkaido cream and milk for higher fat, sweeter and richer. Yudane-style uses boiling water on flour overnight (Pan & Co. Tokyo signature). Pullman shokupan with the lid bakes a flat-topped square; kaku-shoku without the lid bakes the domed yama (mountain) shape — both are sold side by side.
On the Palate
Where Shokupan sits in the Japanese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
5 steps · 8 min active + 3 hours 25 min waiting
- 18 min
Make tangzhong roux: cook 25 g flour + 125 ml milk to thick paste, cool.
Watch outCook the roux just until whisk-lines hold and it turns pudding-thick, then stop — overcook it and there's no water left to soften the crumb.
- 28 min
Mix tangzhong with 500 g bread flour + 200 ml milk + 7 g yeast + 60 g sugar + 8 g salt + 1 egg + 50 g butter.
- 3102 min
Knead 12 min until very elastic; first rise 1.5 hr.
Watch outKnead until you can stretch a thin windowpane that doesn't tear — that gluten is what gives shokupan its teary, cottony pull.
- 460 min
Divide into 3 rolls; place in greased Pullman pan; second rise 1 hr.
- 535 min
Cover with lid; bake 180 °C 35 min for square loaf with tight white crumb.
Watch outProof until the dough crests just below the pan rim before you lid it — too low and the loaf won't fill the square corners.
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