食パン - Soft & Fluffy Japanese-style Bread

I'd like to make small loaves but unless I want to eat odd-shaped bread, I just have to make bigger loaves or bake the bread in smaller pans. I wonder if I could still use the bread machine for baking and just bake the dough in a different pan inside the bread machine.
Edit: I actually can! I bought a Pullman pan from Japan and I've been baking shokupan in it!

And, there are other good news too! Some 10 or so not-quite-perfect shokupans later I finally succeeded, at least a bit. It's still not quite as fluffy and soft and white as the ones I've tried in Japan (oh, what's the name of that bakery opposite Oyama station... Maruju (I had to check that from a photo from last autumn)) but still quite a good substitute (I wish someone would start up a Japanese bakery here in Helsinki). I promise to post later photos of extremely fluffy Japanese toast ^^

The recipe is based on the first ever recipe I tried, but wasn't successful then (maybe because of the wrong flour). The one from Lidl does the trick: the bread will be so different to the one made with Finnish flour. The amounts for the recipe are slightly too much for my perfect cube-shaped pan: if the bread rises well, it'll start to leak over despite the lid. On one occasion of my roughly dozen (or so) experiments, I forgot to close the lid completely (I like to keep watch of the rising dough and close the lid when the proper baking phase starts) until it was too late and the bread had risen over the pan and I had overly browned bread bits on the bottom of the bread machine lol

ふわふわ☆食パン　・　Soft (and almost Fluffy) Shokupan

240-250 g bread (strong) flour
140 g milk
40 ml water
45 g butter
20 g sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1,5-2 tsp dry yeast

Read the instructions from here (just ignore the parts about tangzhong... or you could also try the recipe with tangzhong: 12-25 g flour + 60-125 ml liquid (remember to substract the amounts of flour and liquid accordingly from the recipe above. And please tell me how it went :)

adapted from Cookpad.

Another recipe to try later: http://cookpad.com/recipe/3281124

As much as I love adding stuff to my photos (not!) I just couldn't resist the temptation... meet Kitty Pan!!!

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