Whole Wheat Japanese Milk Bread: Attempt #1

I’m a cook, not a baker. The difference is kind of the difference between an engineering mindset (start with a basic design, hack until success is achieved) versus a scientific mindset (test a hypothesis through experiments in which you control for variables; also, actually read the directions). I’m definitely an engineer.

I encountered whole-wheat Japanese milk bread on my recent trip to Hawaii. It’s made by a bakery called LA Tour Bakehouse, and it’s MAGICAL: chewy, light, just the right amount of sweetness, toasts like a dream. Three words: kimchi grilled cheese. Anyway, I decided to try to make it since shipping it from HI wasn’t going to work.

Ha ha. I should back up and explain my previous experiences with bread baking. My first ever bread-making experience was when, at the age of 8, I decided to invent my own recipe: coffee pecan buns. My mom helped me out massively here by supplying her own Parker House roll recipe as the base (my mom’s an amazing baker, as you might guess given she’s a chemist by training). But then I sabotaged the whole effort by insisting on putting coffee grounds in the buns even though my mom tried very nicely to convince me it was going to be awful. And it was. And I will say it was an accurate measure of our pastor at the time, Edwin’s, complete dedication to his flock that he choked one down when he visited our house on Sunday and declared it delicious.

Fast forward to me registering for a bread machine when I got married. I was smart, I thought: the machine would make up for my deficiencies in baking. Nope. I turned out loaf after loaf of something that might best be described as “horned bread” (never could get the altitude figured out in NM). I gave up baking for years until, you guessed it, the pandemic, and then I decided to try again when my friend Jason gave me some of his awesome sourdough starter (this was when you couldn’t buy yeast if you tried). Well, it kind of worked. As my sister (a very good baker, too: hey, she’s a physicist….) always puts it: “Bread wants to be bread.” I would say in my case it’s more like: Bread wants to be a brick. Very nutritious, pretty tasty bricks. But let’s not kid ourselves.

Imagine my amazement, then, when this recipe for Hokkaido Whole Wheat Milk Bread turned out looking like bread was supposed to ON THE FIRST TRY. I was ecstatic. Until I bit into it. Yep. Forgot the salt entirely.

Sigh. Stay tuned….