Sourdough Milk Bread (Shokupan), Soft as a Cloud

This sourdough milk bread is our take on shokupan, the Japanese milk bread: tall, with a thin golden crust and a crumb so soft it almost melts. It’s the loaf we make for breakfast toast and weekday sandwiches, and the one that disappears fastest in our house.

It has two secrets. The first is tangzhong, a cooked paste of milk and flour that holds on to moisture and keeps the crumb tender for days. The second is that it rises with sourdough starter only, no commercial yeast, and that makes it easy to fit into your day: mix the dough in the afternoon, let the pan rest in the fridge overnight and bake it the next morning. Or do it all in one day.

You may know it as Hokkaido milk bread or Japanese milk bread, which belong to the same family. It’s softer and a touch sweeter than a regular sandwich loaf, and it’s the bread behind Japanese egg sandwiches, the tamago sando.

Everything is in grams, with cups alongside, and above all with the signs that tell you when each step is ready. With sourdough, you follow the dough, not the clock.

The only thing to plan ahead is 120 g (½ cup) of active sourdough starter at its peak. If you’re not sure how to get it there, we explain it right below the recipe.

How We Make It at Home, Step by Step

Getting Your Sourdough Starter Ready

For this bread you need 120 g (½ cup) of active sourdough starter at its peak, at 100% hydration, which means it’s fed with equal weights of flour and water. At its peak means at the highest point of its rise after a feeding: it has doubled, it’s bubbly all the way through, the top is domed and it smells mildly tangy, like yogurt.

Timing matters more here than in a lean loaf. This dough has sugar, egg and butter, and all three slow the starter down. If you use it tired or straight from the fridge, the rise can take a very long time.

Don’t have a starter yet? Here’s how to make sourdough starter from scratch. It takes one to two weeks of daily feedings.

How to Get 120 g of Starter at Its Peak

If you keep your starter in the fridge, feed it a few hours before you start:

Ingredient	Amount
Starter from the fridge	30 g (2 tbsp)
Flour	75 g (½ cup + 2 tbsp)
Room temperature water	75 g (⅓ cup)

Any wheat flour works, so use the one you usually feed it with. Mix, cover loosely and leave it at room temperature. How long it takes depends on your kitchen:

• Warm kitchen, 24 to 26 °C (75 to 79 °F): 4 to 5 hours
• Mild kitchen, 20 to 22 °C (68 to 72 °F): 6 to 8 hours
• Cool kitchen, below 19 °C (66 °F): 10 to 12 hours

You’ll have 180 g. Use 120 g for the bread and keep the remaining 60 g in the fridge for next time.

Want it ready when you wake up? Feed it before bed with 15 g of starter, 80 g of flour and 80 g of water. It takes longer and gives you a wider window in the morning. We explain how feeding ratios work in our sourdough starter guide.

If it smells like nail polish remover, it’s hungry: give it another feeding before you use it. And if it has been weeks since you last fed it, one feeding won’t be enough. Give it two or three, 12 to 24 hours apart, until it rises reliably. We cover these and other starter problems in our sourdough starter troubleshooting guide.

What Tangzhong Is and Why It Makes the Crumb So Soft

Tangzhong is a technique used in many Asian milk breads. You cook a small part of the flour with milk until it thickens, then add that paste to the dough.

It sounds like a small detail, but it changes the whole crumb. When flour is cooked, its starch gelatinizes and can hold far more water than raw flour. That water stays inside the bread through baking and afterwards, which is why the crumb comes out so tender and stays that way for days.

We use the classic ratio: 1 part flour to 5 parts liquid. That’s 25 g of flour and 125 g of milk, a little over 5% of all the flour in the bread.

How to Tell It’s Ready

Over low heat, stirring constantly, it goes from liquid milk to a thick paste in 2 or 3 minutes, a bit like a loose béchamel. When you drag the spoon across the bottom of the pan, it leaves a trail that closes slowly. With a thermometer, it’s ready at about 65 °C (149 °F). It doesn’t need to boil.

Two Common Mistakes

Lumps. Whisk the flour into the milk while both are cold, before you turn on the heat. Flour added to hot milk clumps instantly.

Adding it hot. It should be lukewarm or at room temperature, because heat can harm the starter. You can make it ahead and keep it in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, but take it out in time to come back to room temperature.

What Milk, Butter and Egg Do in Sourdough Bread

A basic sourdough loaf is just flour, water, salt and starter. This one swaps all the water for milk and adds butter, egg and sugar. Each of them changes the bread in a specific way:

Milk makes the crumb softer and a little sweeter, and the crust browns faster and deeper. That’s why we cover the pan with foil for the first part of the bake.

Butter coats the gluten strands and keeps them short, and that’s where the tender, almost cake-like bite comes from. It’s also why it goes in only once the dough has built some strength.

Egg adds richness and color, and gives the crumb a finer, more even texture.

Sugar adds a gentle sweetness and helps the bread stay moist.

The trade-off is time. All of these slow the starter down, so this dough ferments more slowly than a lean loaf. In our kitchen, a basic sourdough loaf finishes its bulk fermentation in 2 to 3 hours. This one takes 3 to 6.

That’s why the hours are only a guide. The dough is ready when it has grown by about 60% and looks airy. In a glass bowl you’ll see small bubbles on the sides. And the most reliable sign: when you shake the bowl gently, the dough jiggles, like set custard.

Keys to a Soft, Tall Loaf

Very Soft Butter, Added in Three Parts

The butter goes in once the dough has come together, not at the start, because fat coats the flour and gets in the way of gluten forming. First the dough builds structure, then we enrich it. It’s the same trick behind our fluffy homemade cinnamon rolls.

It has to be very soft but not melted. Melted butter separates and won’t work its way into the dough. Take it out of the fridge a couple of hours before you start.

Each time you add a portion, the dough will look like it’s falling apart and turn slippery. That’s normal. Keep kneading until it’s smooth and even again, with no visible bits of butter, and only then add the next portion. By hand, it helps to stretch the dough up without tearing it and fold it back over itself, turning the bowl as you go.

If the butter won’t go in, let the dough rest for 10 minutes. If the dough gets warm and very sticky, chill it for a little while before you carry on.

Roll Each Piece Up Tightly

Shaping the dough into three rolls is what gives shokupan its three domes and its fine, even crumb. Roll each piece out into a long strip and roll it up tightly, with no air trapped inside. Loose rolls leave big holes in the crumb.

Weigh the pieces so they’re equal, about 350 g (12 oz) each. That way they rise at the same pace and the loaf comes out even.

The Poke Test

It’s the most reliable way to tell when the second rise is done. Press the dough gently with a wet or oiled finger:

• If the dent springs back slowly and leaves a small mark, it’s ready.
• If it springs back quickly and leaves no trace, it needs more time.
• If it stays sunken and doesn’t spring back at all, it’s close to overproofed: get it in the oven right away.

The Foil Tent

We cover the pan for the first 25 minutes with a loose foil tent that doesn’t touch the dough. This dough has sugar, milk and egg, so it browns very quickly. Covered, the loaf finishes rising and bakes through before the crust takes on color. Then we uncover it, lower the temperature and let it brown.

The tent doesn’t need to be neat or airtight. It shapes the color, not the loaf: with it, the top bakes into rounded domes.

Use a Thermometer

A loaf with butter, sugar and egg can look perfectly golden outside and still be raw in the middle. An instant-read thermometer settles it: the bread is done when the center reads 93 to 96 °C (199 to 205 °F).

Without one, look for a deep golden color and a loaf that feels firm when you tap it. If in doubt, give it a few more minutes. Slightly overbaked beats raw in the middle.

Unmold Right Away, Then Wait Two Hours

Take the loaf out of the pan within the first few minutes out of the oven. Steam builds up inside a hot pan, and the bottom and sides turn damp.

Then let it cool on a wire rack for at least 2 hours before slicing. The crumb is still setting, and if you cut it earlier it squashes under the knife. We know it’s hard to wait.

Same-Day or Overnight: How We Schedule It

Both work, and the bread comes out just as soft. The overnight version is the one we make most, because it splits the work into two relaxed moments. These timings are for a mild kitchen, about 20 to 22 °C (68 to 72 °F). In a warmer kitchen everything moves faster, and in a cooler one, slower.

Overnight: mix in the afternoon, bake in the morning

When	What you do
Day 1, 9 am	Feed your starter (30 g + 75 g + 75 g)
Day 1, 3 pm	Make the tangzhong and let it cool
Day 1, 3:30 pm	Mix the dough, rest 20 minutes, then add the starter, salt and butter
Day 1, 4:30 pm	Bulk fermentation starts. At 5:30 pm, one set of folds
Day 1, 8:30 to 9:30 pm	When the dough jiggles: divide, shape and place in the pan
Day 1, night	Pan well covered, into the fridge
Day 2, morning	Take the pan out and wait for it to pass the poke test. In our kitchen it takes about 2 hours
Day 2	Bake for 55 minutes, unmold and cool for 2 hours

Same day: bake it in the evening

When	What you do
The night before	Feed your starter with the slower overnight feed (15 g + 80 g + 80 g)
8 am	Make the tangzhong and let it cool
8:30 am	Mix the dough, rest 20 minutes, then add the starter, salt and butter
9:30 am	Bulk fermentation starts. At 10:30 am, one set of folds
1:30 to 2:30 pm	When the dough jiggles: divide, shape and place in the pan
2:30 pm onwards	Second rise at room temperature, 3 to 6 hours, until it passes the poke test
Evening	Bake for 55 minutes, unmold and cool for 2 hours. Perfect for tomorrow’s breakfast

For the overnight version, the pan goes into the fridge right after shaping. The cold puts the second rise on pause.

The Pan: Loaf Pan, Pullman Pan or Baking Dish

We use a loaf pan of about 10 x 25 cm (4 x 10 in), without a lid. This recipe makes just over 1 kg (2.3 lb) of dough, which fills it well.

In the US, an 8½ x 4½ in (22 x 11 cm) loaf pan has almost the same base as ours, so the loaf will rise just as tall. A 9 x 5 in (23 x 13 cm) pan works too. It’s a bit wider, so the loaf will come out slightly lower.

A Pullman pan is a loaf pan with a sliding lid. Baked with the lid on, the bread comes out perfectly square, like the shokupan in a Japanese bakery. We bake ours without a lid, under the foil tent, so the top rises into rounded domes. If you have a Pullman pan, you can use it without the lid, as we do.

Whatever pan you use, grease it well with butter or oil in every corner, or line it with parchment paper. This dough sticks.

No Loaf Pan? Use a Baking Dish

You don’t need to buy anything. We’ve baked this bread in an ordinary baking dish and it came out just as good, only a different shape. Three things make it work:

Pick a dish close in size to a loaf pan. In a much larger one, the dough spreads out and the loaf comes out low and wide. In a smaller one, it will overflow.

Divide the dough into more pieces. Instead of three rolls, make more, smaller pieces and arrange them so they fill the dish evenly and rise together.

Trust the thermometer more than the timer. Glass and ceramic dishes heat up more slowly than a metal pan, and the shape changes the baking time. It’s done when the center reads 93 to 96 °C (199 to 205 °F).

The foil tent for the first 25 minutes works the same way.

Variations: With Commercial Yeast or Without Eggs

With Commercial Yeast Instead of Sourdough

You can, but it’s not just a matter of leaving the starter out. Those 120 g of starter are really 60 g of flour and 60 g of water. Take them out without replacing them and the dough ends up drier and the loaf smaller. These are the changes:

Change	Amount
Leave out the starter	120 g (½ cup)
Add more bread flour, with the rest of the flour	60 g (½ cup), 495 g in the dough in total
Add more milk, with the other liquids	60 g (¼ cup), 225 g in the dough in total
Add instant yeast	5 g (1½ tsp), or 15 g of fresh yeast

The tangzhong stays the same. Add the yeast where you would add the starter, after the 20-minute rest. If you only have active dry yeast, use the same amount and dissolve it in the milk in the first step of the dough instead.

Everything else stays the same except the timing, which is much faster with yeast. Bulk fermentation usually takes 1 to 2 hours and the second rise about an hour. Follow the same signs: the jiggle and the poke test.

The bread turns out good, but with a flatter flavor. Besides the flexible schedule, what the starter brings is a deeper, more complex flavor, without tasting sour.

Without Eggs

Replace the egg with 50 g (3½ tbsp) of milk. The bread still works, with a slightly less tender crumb and a paler color.

If you’d rather bake a crusty country loaf with your starter, our easy sourdough bread is the place to start.

How to Store Sourdough Milk Bread

Thanks to the tangzhong, this bread stays soft for 3 or 4 days at room temperature. Store it once it’s completely cool, in a sealed bag or an airtight container. There’s no crackly crust to protect here: what matters is keeping the crumb from drying out.

Keep it out of the fridge. At fridge temperatures, the starch in bread firms up much faster than on the counter, so it goes stale sooner.

For longer, freeze it. Slice it the same day, freeze the slices in a bag and toast them straight from frozen, or let them thaw for about 10 minutes at room temperature.

Sourdough Milk Bread FAQ

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