Ginza Nishikawa is a ghost kitchen in West LA slanging one thing and one thing only: shokupan aka Japanese Milk Bread. You order online in the morning for pick up the same day. Be quick about it because the day’s batch goes quickly apparently.
Of course I used it to try to recreate the Japanese 7-11 egg salad sandwich following this recipe: Best Japanese 7-11 Egg Sandwich Recipe - How to Make Egg Salad Sanwiches
May I ask the price? Shokupan is fairly popular in Seattle but the prices are exorbitant.
Exorbitant here as well: $18 for a loaf
apparently people were reselling the shokupan (only in LA will there be shokupan black market) and thus now it’s limited to 3 pp.
but how was it though? substantially better than what you can get at local asian bakeries?
I thought it was just OK.
I’m far from a shokupan connoisseur but I think it’s delicious. Will certainly return for more.
Shokupan is just bread that has milk added instead of water? Or is there something else?
it’s also made w/ tangzhong, which is a cooked flour water paste that makes this type of bread so soft and last longer than non tangzhong breads. It’s an enriched bread with milk and butter similar to brioche, but the tangzhong is what seperates it apart.
“The most ubiquitous type of bread in Japan is the white and pillowy square-shaped bread called shokupan, which simply means “eating bread.” Made of white flour, yeast, milk or milk powder, butter, salt and sugar, shokupan is both loved and taken for granted by most.”
As usual, Japan is great at marketing itself; shokupan is so boring and humdrum, everywhere in Japan. Course, you overpay for it here in the US.
Tangzhong (Chinese: 湯種; pinyin: tāngzhǒng), also known as a water roux or yu-dane (Japanese: 湯種, romanized: yu-dane) is a paste of flour cooked in water or milk to over 65 °C (149 °F) which is used to improve the texture of bread and increase the amount of time it takes to stale.
Tangzhong is a gel, which helps stabilize the wheat starches in the bread, to prevent recrystallization which is the main cause of staling.
i agree, the name, ginza nishikawa just screams $$$$ as opposed to banh mi ba le, if they were to offer same, $ lol
In fairness, it’s named that because its flagship store is in Ginza, so it’s not just a marketing ploy. Apparently they have 100 or so locations in Japan.
That said, I agree that Japanese specialty items have a cultural cache that allows them to be sold at a premium, justified or not. I mean I paid $8 for a stupid (and delicious) strawberry in Japan…
can’t argue with you there. but i’ll stick to my usual shokupan baked in my USA pullman pans yesterday. unless i win the lotto and can splurge on $18 loaves. lol
How bout you sell me one of those for $12??? 
What recipe do you use?
mines morphed quite a bit but i think original might be the king arthur one.
@ShokupanSweet.LA forthcoming?
Question: have you (or anyone else) ever had exceptional shokupan? Is it just the softness that makes it special? I don’t think I’ve had it often, but I actually don’t love how soft Japanese sandwich bread tends to be (which has led me to not seeking out Japanese sandwiches)…
I can attest that using the King Arthur Milk Bread recipe for pull apart dinner rolls has made them an explicit request every year since at my partner’s sister’s place for thanksgiving. We’re actually skipping it this year for a friend’s 60th out at the coast, and we’ll also be gone for Xmas, so I suspect I’ll get a request for some on a random visit.
they’re really good and not difficult at all.
