So, here’s that bread that was stalking my twitter earlier this week. You can indeed make BREAD in a RICE COOKER. HOWEVER, it takes much patience due to the max temperature of said appliance. Like5 hours…

But let me relate to you WHERE this recipe came from and why the rice cooker. This is from an ANIME that is about BREAD (pan/ぱん). 「焼きたてジャぱん！」 /”Yakitate Japan!” to be precise which translates to “Freshly Baked JaPAN” which is a pun for bread representing Japan …because of the “pan” part which is “bread” in Japanese…. The show is FULL of lame jokes and TONSSSSSS of PUNNNNNNNNNS. And it’s my absolute FAVORITE show of anything animated. Pure crack. You should probably watch it…now. ASIDE, it’s about a boy who’s goal is to make a bread that represents Japan and could be eaten as a main staple instead of RICE. Azuma Kazuma is his name and he hails from the countryside without any proper schooling in baking and thus all his creations are named “Japan #something”. This one being Japan #2. And that is the history and whatnot of this bread…

Anyways, onto the process!

Firstly, the recipe. I had to convert the recipe onto ounces since my scale only reads that (the original is in metric). It is BEST for non-metric utensiled cooks to use a scale to get the closest accurate measurement. CRUCIAL to cooking, please take the time to measure correctly! (original recipe taken from this translation)

- Bread flour 12.3 oz
- Butter .7 oz
- Sugar .7 oz
- Milk 35 ml
- Water 180 ml
- Dry Yeast .18 oz
- Table salt .23 oz

Again, if you have an electric scale (I have a USPS one… ), please use it and try NOT to round if possible. If anyone really is going to try this, the part about the YEAST is kind of vague so I’ll tell you two options: add more water to the yeast and save the 180 ml for the recipe OR take some water from the 180 ml and add it to the yeast. I did the latter and it turned out fine. I’m going to try the prior when I make this again.

So I’ll truncate the recipe here: Mix bread flour, sugar & salt together in rice cooker bowl/pot. Dissolve the yeast in water. Add water, milk & yeast mixture to dry ingredients and mix well. Mix/knead until the dough comes together and doesn’t feel flour-y (if there’s some flour that won’t stick, it’s ok.). Once that is accomplished, add butter to the dough and knead it through until incorporated. This will make the dough a but moist and you can now pick up all the flour and crumbs in the pot. Knead until the dough is no longer sticky.

Place in a warm place for 1 hour (first fermentation). Remove from pot, remove excess gas by droppping the dough from about 1.5 ft high onto a counter and replace in rice cooker pot. Replace in warm place for another hour (second fermentation). Once the hour is up, set in machine and bake/fire/cook for 1 hour. Flip over and then cook for another hour. And finally, flip once more and cook for the final hour. All in all, 15-20 minutes to prep dough, 2 hours to ferment, 3 hours to cook. 5.5 hours for this…

Your rice cooker should have a timer function…I’m not sure how well this works with a non-timer rice cooker so sorry I can’t offer alterneratives for that! The following are some snaps while in progress. It’s a pretty delicious pan with a pretty simple recipe. The end result was a FLUFFY mellow bread with a thin crust and sooooooooooft crumb. Gonna try a honey pan recipe next…