Japanese Melon Bread

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Japanese melon bread (メロンパン) is a delicious and popular snack bread. It is a soft, sweet bread with a sugary and crisp, almond cookie crust. The bread doesn’t have a melon flavour. Rather, the name comes from the melon design that is cut into the bread before baking.

I first discovered this treat in Japan as a young teen. It was my new favourite thing! I loved to have it with a chilled glass of Japanese royal milk tea. To my poor Japanese host mother’s frustration (I’m sure), I spoilt more than a couple of dinners by filling up on these during the day.

I remember dealing with a very overpacked suitcase on the way back home. But it was all worth it to bring back ten buns of Japanese melon bread with me.

How to make Japanese melon bread

Making the bread dough

Add bread flour, brown sugar, yeast, and salt into a large mixing and mix them together well.

Crack a large egg into a bowl. Use chopsticks to lightly whisk it, mixing the yolk and whites together. Then divide the egg evenly between two bowls. Set one aside to be used in the cookie crust later.

Add the other, along with water, in with the bread dry ingredients. Mix them in well with chopsticks.

Mix in the butter. Once the dough begins to come together, transfer it to a clean work surface. Knead it well for ten minutes. It’s very important for the dough to be kneaded enough. Otherwise, you will end up with small, dense buns. The dough should spring back if pressed.

Form the kneaded dough into a ball and return it to the mixing bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for forty minutes.

Making the cookie crust

While the bread dough is rising, you can make the cookie crust. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix together the butter and brown sugar.

Add in the half egg reserved earlier and mix.

In another bowl, mix cake flour and almond flour together very well.

Add the dry ingredients in with the butter mixture and combine to form the cookie dough. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Put this dough into a zip-top sandwich bag. Form it into a flat rectangle at the bottom, as pictured below. Place the bag on a flat surface in the refrigerator to cool.

Back to the bread

Punch the bread dough and separate it into eight evenly sized balls. Cover the balls with plastic wrap, and let them sit for ten minutes before continuing with the next step.

Back to the cookie dough

Retrieve the bag of cookie dough from the fridge. Cut the sides of the bag open with scissors, leaving the bottom intact.

Cut the dough into eight even pieces and remove the pieces of dough from the bag.

Take one piece of the cookie dough and push in the corners to form it into a rough sphere. Place it between the two sides of the cut open plastic bag. Roll it out with a rolling pin into a circle a little bigger than a ball of the bread dough.

Combining the two

Place the circle of cookie dough into the palm of your hand.

Set a ball of bread dough in the centre.

Wrap the cookie dough around the bread dough, like pictured below. Where the bread dough is exposed will be the bottom of the bun.

Flip the bun over to be correct side up.

Gently dip the bun into a bowl of granulated sugar, making sure that the cookie crust is coated.

Use a knife to carefully cut a melon design into the bun, with four vertical and four horizontal lines. Be careful when cutting the design. You want to cut deep into the cookie dough, but without quite cutting through to the bread underneath. If you cut too far, the cookie crust will split apart while baking.

Place the bun on a baking sheet. Repeat the steps to make all of the other buns.

Cover the baking sheet with plastic wrap and allow the bread to ferment again for another twenty minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375°F / 190°C. Remove the plastic wrap and bake the melon bread for thirteen minutes.

Cool the bread to room temperature. Enjoy your melon bread soon – fresh is best.

Melon bread is perfect for enjoying with Japanese royal milk tea, a beautiful and delicate floral tea that is delicious served either hot or cold.

印刷