No Knead Japanese Milk Bread (Shokupan / 食パン)

No Knead Japanese Milk Bread (Shokupan / 食パン)

This bread is the perfect sandwich bread. Grilled cheese, soft squishy PB&Js and sloppy towers of meat and cheese and sauce slapped between two quivering slices. It doesn't require kneading, but it does require some patience. The poolish extends the shelf life further than yudane alone - as long as you keep it wrapped, this bread won't stale for 4+ days without preservatives. Fuck yeah!

A forgiving recipe, you can swap the dairy for vegan alternatives without issue. I usually make it with country crock plant butter + full fat oat milk.

No Knead Japanese Milk Bread (Shokupan / 食パン)

Yield: 2 standard loaves

Ingredients

Poolish

  • 165g bread flour

  • 165g water

  • 1/4t active dry or instant yeast (if you're baking in 4 hours) OR 1/16th (if you're baking tomorrow morning and it's night)

Yudane

  • 165g bread flour

  • 165g water

  • 165g full fat milk (cow or plant)

Dough

  • Poolish

  • Yudane

  • 496g bread flour

  • 48g water

  • 71g milk

  • 14g ADY

  • 49g sugar

  • 113g butter (one stick)

  • 17g salt

Steps

  1. Anywhere from 4 to 12 hours before you make your dough, make your poolish:

    1. Add yeast into water, stir, then add flour and mix until uniform. Personally, I think using a whisk for any sort of dough is nonsense - too much sticks to the whisk. Use chopsticks!

    2. Cover and let sit at ~70F until bubbly and fermented. It's ready when a blob dropped in a cup of water will float.

  2. When your poolish is ready, cook your yudane:

    1. Combine the flour, water and milk in a sauce pan.

    2. Weigh the entire thing - your sauce pan included. You want to know how much it weighs up front so you know how much liquid you've cooked off while gelatinizing your starch.

    3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until temp reaches 150F - the mixture will be pudding like in consistency.

    4. Let it cool enough so that you can weigh it again.

    5. Subtract cooked weight from raw weight. This difference is how much liquid you've cooked off that needs to be added back to the recipe.

    6. Add missing water back to pan while still warm and stir to combine. This also helps cool the yudane and loosens it up so it won't be so difficult to remove from the pan.

  3. Measure your ingredient temperatures. Your DDT is 78F.

    1. Measure the flour temp.

    2. Measure the poolish temp.

    3. Measure the yudane temp.

    4. Measure the room temp.

    5. From 390 (78\*5), subtract the flour, poolish, yudane and room temperatures.

    6. This number is the temp of your water / milk.

  4. Combine the water and milk and and either refrigerate or microwave to bring to the appropriate temp.

  5. Add your liquid to the yudane, mixing uniformly.

  6. Add your sugar and yeast, mixing uniformly.

  7. Add your softened butter and mix until fully incorporated. Your mixture should be cool to not melt the butter.

  8. Add your salt and mix.

  9. Add your poolish and mix.

  10. FINALLY, add flour and mix. It'll be sticky, and it won't really hold together. THAT'S FINE! Fermentation will give you the gluten you need.

  11. Now, you're going to leave this thing mostly alone, covered, for somewhere between 2 and 3 hours. You want the volume to double, and you want to pass the windowpane test. Every 45 minutes, you will stretch and fold twice. Keep it warm! If it's winter, I like to slop the dough onto my bench and then boil some water and pour it into a little glass and place it next to the dough, then invert a giant stainless steel bowl over it. Impromptu proof box!

  12. After you've stretched and folded 3 times, see if dough passes the windowpane test. For me, I usually get windowpane at 2:15 and volume doubling at 2:30 or so.

References

Posted: Tue May 13 2025 17:23:03 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Last Updated: