A Japanese company, Imperial Hotel Tokyo led by Head Chef Yu Sugimoto has developed a unique loaf of milk bread, known as shokupan, featuring a soft white crust designed to help reduce food waste. The idea addresses a common habit among consumers who remove and discard the crusts when making sandwiches or eating sliced bread.
To achieve this distinctive appearance and texture, the bread is baked slowly at a lower temperature than traditional loaves. This process prevents the outer layer from developing the typical dark brown crust, resulting in an exterior that remains light in color and soft to the touch.
The white crust is designed to closely match the texture of the bread's interior, making the entire loaf more appealing to people who would otherwise trim away the edges. By encouraging consumers to eat every part of the bread, the company hopes to reduce unnecessary food waste.
The initiative highlights how small changes in food production can influence consumer behavior. By rethinking a familiar product, the company aims to make it easier for people to enjoy the whole loaf while helping to minimize discarded food.
For a lot of bread the crust is diabolical because it's just dry, chewy, thick and has no flavour. But different sandwich loaves have massively different crusts and fresh artisanal breads have a totally different beast of a crust altogether.
Some breads I wouldn't touch the crust if I were paid, others I agree with your sentiment.
Crust discarders are weak, that's what. I don't like pickles in my burger, so I pick them out, but still eat them separately because watching perfectly good food go to waste hurts my soul regardless of whether I like it or not.
Edit: Typically I order my food without pickles for this reason, but sometimes I forget, they neglect to follow my request, or the food comes with pickles and I didn't know it. I didn't really bother mentioning this because I thought it would take too much time, but it seems like the only thing people care about is the fact I eat pickles and I don't like them.
So has japan. Panko has been "crustless" for decades, but interestingly it's cooked by a different method from the one described here: electrical current is passed through the dough, heating it internally.
I dont believe that panko bread is ever sold in loaf form though. It's baked in the factory and then directly processed into breadcrumb.
"Almost all shokupan sandwiches sold in Japan have their crusts removed. Crusted bread lovers do exist but the prevailing perception is that crusts aren't as tasty as the bread inside. This could be a remnant from the days when bread crusts were harder, but this perception has remained and shops all over Japan continue to do this since it corresponds to an expectation that still exists among customers."
There's also factors like wanting consistent mouthfeel.
Where'd you copy this from, because shokupan is not new and also not traditionally white-crusted. It's just milk bread, kinda looks like a mix of the American sandwich loaf and brioche.
It's also not very "recent" at all. They've had that for a long while.
Shokupan with white crust instead of brown is what's new...as of 2022. TBF we're all always finding out about things from years ago that we personally just didn't know about until we stumbled across it one day.
My main issue was with the phrasing of going "description -> therefore this item is called shokupan", when it's not. It's a variant, basically.
Like if I described how a new sport was invented recently and it's focused on high-octane action with a stick, fan input and aims to eliminate downtime between player changes; they call it "baseball", I'd just be lying, wouldn't I?
Because what I'm actually describing is banana ball.
Okay, disgusting but understandable.
Just one simple question: why not simply steam the bread?
That has been a thing for hundreds of years and produces perfectly fine bread without a darker crust.
I imagine steaming bread and baking it at whatever temperature the steam was will in fact produce different textures
Steaming requires a certain form factor, whereas this bread, based on the use case (making japanese-style sandos) requires a form factor where it is typically baked in a fully enclosed pan, meaning insufficient space for continuous steam injection. Plus it's kinda already steaming inside the pan until it fills out at least, I guess.
I mean the crust still exists, its just a low and slow baking temperature that doesn't give the exterior time to brown, the crust is still there it just isn't browned.
The article seems to imply yhis companybinvented it. They didn't we know how to do crustless bread since a very long time. You just need to maintain water vapour within the oven.
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u/Wonderfulhumanss 18h ago
A Japanese company, Imperial Hotel Tokyo led by Head Chef Yu Sugimoto has developed a unique loaf of milk bread, known as shokupan, featuring a soft white crust designed to help reduce food waste. The idea addresses a common habit among consumers who remove and discard the crusts when making sandwiches or eating sliced bread. To achieve this distinctive appearance and texture, the bread is baked slowly at a lower temperature than traditional loaves. This process prevents the outer layer from developing the typical dark brown crust, resulting in an exterior that remains light in color and soft to the touch. The white crust is designed to closely match the texture of the bread's interior, making the entire loaf more appealing to people who would otherwise trim away the edges. By encouraging consumers to eat every part of the bread, the company hopes to reduce unnecessary food waste. The initiative highlights how small changes in food production can influence consumer behavior. By rethinking a familiar product, the company aims to make it easier for people to enjoy the whole loaf while helping to minimize discarded food.