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During the lockdown, like everyone else, I took the opportunity to improve my skills in making sourdough bread. It may have seemed unnecessary since I own a bakery and can easily get a freshly baked loaf every morning. However, I got caught up in the hype around working harmoniously with natural fermentation, appreciating the sacred nature of “The Mother” and experiencing the transformative power of the oven.
I became adept at creating large, airy loaves with a delightfully sour taste and beautifully carved dark-brown crusts. But I had a guilty secret. Deep down, I longed for plain, white packaged bread, reminiscent of my childhood. Perhaps not the highly processed supermarket loaves, but at least the mass-produced, sliced white bread that was so familiar to me.
This craving consumed me. Then, I discovered that the Japanese had already beaten me to it. I started hearing about “shokupan.” Shokupan, or its slightly sweeter version called Hokkaido milk bread, is the beloved sandwich loaf of Japan. It is made similarly to regular white bread but includes ingredients like egg and powdered milk. What sets it apart is the use of tangzhong, a cooked roux, which gives the dough the ability to hold a lot of gas during baking, resulting in a fluffy texture without being chewy. It achieves a quality similar to the industrial Chorleywood process but with completely natural ingredients.
Unsurprisingly, this trend has taken off and flooded my social media feeds. California seems to be overflowing with fluffy white loaves. Now, a few UK outlets, such as Happy Sky bakery in west London and the upcoming Shokupan in Birmingham, are offering sandos, visually stunning sandwiches made with perfectly sliced shokupan and generous layers of fillings. In my inbox, I receive messages from enthusiastic young startups offering “artisanal shokupan” at prices comparable to a small car.
Bread was introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the 16th century, but it wasn’t until the Meiji period that it became more widely consumed. Shokupan emerged after World War II when the US supplied large quantities of wheat and powdered milk to Japan. It was a time of transition for the Japanese diet, which had primarily relied on rice. The history of shokupan is intricately connected to broader cultural and culinary developments, which Barak Kushner explores in his fascinating book “Slurp.”
Shokupan holds a special place in the hearts of Japanese food lovers, evoking nostalgia just like the loaves of our own youth. It is closely associated with yoshuku, the Japanese adaptation of Western recipes. In 2019, Mitsubishi even introduced a high-tech toaster designed specifically for shokupan, allowing for precise control over toasting time, temperature, and humidity. This level of appreciation and perfectionism towards commodity bread is enchanting.
It’s no surprise that culinary enthusiasts around the world, including our own hipsters, eagerly follow Japanese trends. We’ve witnessed the global rise of ramen, which has become as ubiquitous as the hamburger and pizza, regardless of its origin story. In the UK, the introduction of Japanese “curry” has brought our colonial past full circle. The shokupan tale adds another layer of complexity to this phenomenon.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m fully on board with the shokupan craze. After all, I recently embarked on a road trip halfway across the country to a Birmingham shopping mall in search of a classic white-bread egg sandwich. As I savored my delicious tamago sando during an exclusive preview of Shokupan, I couldn’t help but reflect on the choices that brought me here. While I would never touch a regular supermarket egg sandwich, I found myself indulging in a millennial reinterpretation of a Japanese take on a product born from Victorian British industrialization. It’s a piece of my own cultural history, one that may have originated in a city like Birmingham to sustain workers in the factories that have since been replaced by the shopping center housing Shokupan. This product, which was forced upon another culture during a time of war, has now been improved and sold back to me by a global, internet-connected youth culture.
Sometimes, I can’t help but be amazed by the complexities of my job.
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