I recently succeeded in baking a delicious Japanese Pull-Apart Bread! I managed to make them look cute, too! Yay! With that said, let me first tell you what you need to bake this bread.

You need the RIGHT SIZED PAN! It frustrated me that most Baking Bloggers don’t tell you the dimension of the pans they use. The recipe I used calls for an 18cm x 18cm square pan. (I had to wade through 20 blogs and videos — or more! to find this vital information and it took me 3 days!) Anyway, the pan is pretty small but then so are the Japanese. They love eating bite sized food and in small proportions. Unlike the West where everything is large!
I didn’t have a metalic square pan of that shape. I only have a silicon that’s 20cm x 20cm. It’s way too big and the sides opens wide toward the top. You need a straight 90 degree sides. So, I ended up baking 2 each of different flavor (strawberry and chocolate), and using my rectangular pan that’s 30×20 cm. There were at least 5cm gap at the bottom, so I filled that up with aluminum foil.
First let me tell you why I had to fill up the empty spaces with aluminum foil: the bread didn’t rise enough!!! My entire apartment’s temperature is at 20 C. It still tasted really good but I want to learn and improve! For the yeast to work its magic, the room temperature has to be between 25-28 C. Luckily for me, I discovered a cheap-warming trick I was only able to fully put in action on my third try!

I experienced 2 issues with my 3rd Try: (1.) I didn’t weigh the pieces evenly so I ended up with one open space (bottom, right corner) which I filled in with aluminum foil. I also had uneven sized extras with which I made raspberries and a mushroom shaped bread. (2.)It didn’t bake the entire pan, evenly. I saw the first bottom row was starting to brown so I removed it from the oven. Rookie Mistake! Next time I will cover it with aluminum foil to avoid browning. Well, the bottom row was fully baked but the rest were not!!! So minutes after removing from the oven, they deflated. I had to remove the bottom row and pop the pan back in the oven for another 10 mns of baking!

I would share you my recipe, but I am still trying to figure out the best way to bake it with my 20×30 cm pan!! Once I succeeded baking Chigiri Pan / Cute Pull-Apart Bread without any mistakes, I will for sure, share my recipe! For now, stay tuned!!!

De volgende keer zal ik geen fout maken!
今度は失敗無しを目指して頑張ります!
Next time I will aim to perfect it without any mistakes!


















