Melon Bread (メロンパン or 菠萝面包)

Every evening, at dinner time, I’d knead up the bread and let it do its first proof in the refrigerator, just so that I can have an hour more sleep. But just as important is that a slow proof-ed bread tends to be softer. I like my breads really soft.

Yesterday night, my son went to bed without dinner as he was very tired. When I unpacked his lunchbox, I realized he did not eat lunch either. He got bored with having the same thing for breakfast and lunch.

So today, I used that kneaded bread made last night to make some of these which are his favorite: Melon Pan as the Japanese call it, or Pineapple bread, as the Chinese (mainly Hongkongers and Taiwanese) would call it.

Contrary to expectation, there’s no pineapple nor melon in there. It is named after its pattern that bakers draw on them just prior to baking. I often wonder who invented this first, and since its Japanese name is really in Katakana, it must be foreign to Japanese. Just not sure if they learned the breads from foreigners and then added the melon or cookie part.

Since the Japanese sweet and soft breads have a relatively longer history, I tend to think the HongKongers and Taiwanese borrowed the idea from the Japanese. But I am not sure, just a guess.

What’s unique about this bun is the combination of a cookie and a bread in one bun. It is a soft sweet bread topped with a sweet cookie (like a short bread). The Taiwanese version has a filing in there, while the Japanese versions tend to be just plain bread.  Since I was rushing this morning, I just left out the filing in the bread and made a Japanese version. I have included the recipe of a berry filing herein, anyway. The Chinese versions use an egg wash, while the Japanese ones have a coat of fine sugar.

This cooking with dog channel is fun and they provide great instructions! I did not use their recipe, though. The instruction in a step-by-step visual fashion is really good, except that I did not make the cookie dough using creaming method. I used a simple rub-in or blender method, which cuts the preparation time to a fraction.