Shokupan: familiar food with a Japanese taste

Posted: December 15, 2010 | Author: Doug 陀愚 | Filed under: Cooking, Japan | 3 Comments »

One of the more familiar, but still unusual foods you’ll see in Japan is shokupan (食パン):

Shokupan is essentially white bread, with a very square shape, unlike the shape you typically see in American bread, or in Irish soda bread that my wife and I miss eating sometimes. It’s also frequently sliced thicker too, almost twice as thick as store-bought American bread. You can find it without too much difficult in overseas Asian food markets if they feature Japanese food. Although I generally don’t like white bread, I like Shokupan because it’s usually better quality and has a lot more of a lighter, buttery taste to it. Toasted with jam, it’s really quite good.

The first time I tried it was in Japan at a nearby bakery very close to my wife’s house probably five years ago. We picked up a loaf, took it home and had some with jam the next morning for breakfast, and I was surprised to see it tasted better than the bread I grew up with in the US.¹

Unlike in the West, where bread is usually a staple food, it’s more of a one-off luxury in Japanese cuisine so it’s something you won’t find often for breakfast, and is by extension more fancy like a European pastry. Speaking of which, European pastries and food are actually easy to get in Japan, not just in Tokyo. In Japan they’re popular, but often more of an “eating out food” than something you buy at the grocery store. Rice isn’t going anywhere as the staple.

Here in Seattle though, my wife and buy Japanese food frequently and our cuisine at home is a strange American-Japanese hybrid as shown here in a recent breakfast:

Apologies for the blurry photo, like so many others I take, but that is shokupan with some Tayberry jam we purchased while at the Pumpkin Patch this year (delicious!). Near the top you can see a bowl of my wife’s miso soup plus chopsticks. It’s not unusual for me to eat American toast (not Shokupan which is both expensive and fatty) alongside a bowl of rice and natto and maybe kimchi. Top it off with home-brewed coffee and that’s a typical breakfast for me.² :p

Like our marriage, our food we eat is a blend of Japanese and American, plus things we learned living in Europe, and Shokupan is one example of something the Japanese have taken from abroad and refined it to something better than the stuff I grew up with. When we can afford it (and the calories) we enjoy it when we can.

If you’re in Japan, look for it at a local bakery or store, and don’t miss out.

¹ Frankly food tastes better almost anywhere else than in the US. If you don’t believe me, go to any country outside the US and try the same food. It’s less processed than American food and uses better ingredients (real sugar vs. high-fructose corn syrup for example). America’s love of bigger, cheaper meals is not helping either since we sacrifice quality and good eating habits (read: sensible portion control) in the process.

² One of my Korean friends teases me for being more Korean than she is. Then again, I had a lot of Korean friends in high school and was privileged to enjoy meals with them long before I really knew anything about Asian culture.

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