EASY! Japanese Shio Pan (Salted Butter Rolls)

EASY! Japanese Shio Pan (Salted Butter Rolls)! These crescent-shaped Japanese Salted Butter Rolls locally known as Shio Pan are simple to make yet incredibly tasty bread with a crispy outside and a soft fluffy center with a balance of saltiness from the sea salt flakes and richness from the butter.

EASY! Japanese Shio Pan (Salted Butter Rolls)

These crescent-shaped Japanese Salted Butter Rolls locally known as Shio Pan are simple to make yet incredibly tasty bread with a crispy outside and a soft fluffy center with a balance of saltiness from the sea salt flakes and richness from the butter.

Savory or sweet, these rolls are perfect for breakfast or as a snack. They are so delicious whether eaten on their own or with some jam or cream cheese. Here is a recipe with step-by-step pictures, helpful info plus tips that will help you make it in an easy way at home. Do try them out and let me know how it went in the comment section below!

WHAT IS JAPANESE SHIO PAN?

In Japanese, “shio” means “salt,” and “pan” means “bread.”
Therefore, “shio pan” would translate to “salt bread” or “salted butter rolls.”

Japanese bakeries are known for creating a variety of bread and pastry products, and these salted butter rolls are one of them.

Shio pan is made by stuffing it with a butter stick and shaping it like a crescent roll. The cubed butter gets rolled into the center and melts during baking which helps keep the insides moist and crisps up the bottom part of the bread.

These butter rolls aren’t brushed with an egg wash so they have a dull rustic look but it is the beauty of these lovely rolls. The sprinkle of coarse salt on top of the bread gives a slightly salty savory kick to it.

Using Poolish for Making Perfect Bread

The Poolish method is now one of my favorite ways to make soft bread with great texture. I also used a Poolish Starter to make this Shio pan dough.

What is poolish

Poolish is what’s known as a pre-ferment that is used as a starter in the dough. The best thing about Poolish is that with little effort and time, it enhances the taste and texture of your bread giving it a light, airy texture as if it’s been proven for a long time even though it’s been proven for a short time. 

Difference between
a sourdough starter and a poolish?

Both are considered pre-ferments.

The main difference between a sourdough starter and a poolish starter is that a sourdough starter is made with wild yeast, whereas a poolish is made with commercial yeast.

The commercial yeast works a lot more quickly. So, a poolish is much faster to prepare than a sourdough starter. While it takes weeks for a new sourdough starter to get established and be ready to leaven bread, you can make a poolish starter 8 to 12 hours in advance of baking.

Poolish starter is much more mild than sourdough and lacks sourness, so you can make soft bread without a strong flavor. It enhances flavors and improves textures when used in the dough.

The dough made with a poolish also does not require as much rise time as sourdough does. Poolish dough generally only needs 2-3 hours of rise time, similar to other doughs made with commercial yeast.

How do you make a poolish?

Making a poolish is simple, and takes very little hands-on time. A poolish typically has equal parts of flour and water (1:1). If you use 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour, then you need to add 1% of dry yeast calculated based on the poolish mass, so 1 gram of dry yeast.

Mix all ingredients for poolish and set aside on the countertop (If cold season in a warm place) until doubled in size with lots of bubbles. And then keep it in the fridge until use. You can keep it in the fridge for up to 5 days. Let it come to room temperature for an hour or so before using it.

Japanese Shio Pan-Ingredients

You will find a full printable recipe card at the bottom of this post but here’s a quick peek at what you’ll need.

• Plain or all-purpose flour
• Lukewarm water
• Instant yeast
• Salt
• Granulated sugar
• Bread flour
• Butter softened
• Butter blocks, cold
• Extra flour for the workspace

Steps to Make this Recipe

You can make these butter rolls in 6 basic steps.

1. Mixing and kneading
2. The first rise
3. Shaping
4. The second rise
5. Brushing with water and sprinkling salt
6. Baking

Useful Info Plus Tips
for making Japanese Shio pan

About Kneading part

This dough is a sticky dough, so difficult to work with. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook or bread machine, this recipe will be much easier.

To tell the truth, though I love making bread I don’t enjoy the kneading part. So I usually use my bread machine to make the dough. They all have a “dough” cycle, which will typically knead and rise the dough, then shut off.

If you knead the dough by hand, it will take 10 to 15 mins or so. First, knead for about 5 minutes, then let it rest for five minutes, and knead for another ten or so while resting the dough as needed.

How do you know when bread is kneaded enough?

The easy way to tell is to look for something in your dough called “windows”. You take some dough that you have already kneaded and then stretch it out to see if it pulls into a translucent area or so-called ‘window’.

How to tell if the dough has risen enough

Lightly flour your finger and poke the dough down about 1″. If the indent stays, it’s ready to bake. If it pops back out, give it a bit more time.

Why use Steam when baking Shio Pan?

Steam is best used for bread recipes where you want to achieve a crispy crust with a light, aerated interior.

• Place a large somewhat deep baking tray into the bottom of the oven.
• Once the oven comes to the temperature you want, pour boiling water into the tray enough so it doesn’t all evaporate.
• Immediately place the baking tray with bread into the oven, shut the door, and leave it closed while it bakes.

How to Store Shio Pan

Let the bread cool down completely. You can keep them in an air-tight container for 2-3 days at room temperature when it’s not humid.

For longer storage, keep them in the freezer. Put them in a double layer of freezer bags and keep them in the freezer for up to one month.

The crust will soften the next day if you keep them on the countertop or in the fridge. Reheat in a toaster oven or oven at 170C for 5-8 minutes to crisp it up. Add another 5 minutes if the bread is frozen.

More Bread Recipes to Try

Japanese Shio Pan (Salted Butter Rolls)
Step-by-Step Recipe

Prep Time 20 mins
Cook Time 12 mins
Proof Time 2 hours hrs
Servings 8

Ingredients

Poolish Starter
50 g bread flour
50 g water, lukewarm
1/8 tsp salt
1 g instant yeast

Main dough
Prepared poolish starter
250 g bread flour
10 g milk powder
3 g instant yeast
15 g sugar
3 g salt
150 g water, lukewarm
15 g melted butter

Filling & Topping
8 g butter x 8
2 tbsp water, for brushing
1 tbsp coarse salt, for sprinkling

Instructions

Prepare the poolish Starter

Gather the ingredients for the foolish starter; plain flour, instant yeast, salt, and water

Mix all ingredients for poolish and set aside on the countertop for 3-4 hours till bubbly and then place it in the fridge until the next day when you are ready to use them.

Prepare the dough

• Before you start making the dough, slice the butter into 8 pieces (8 to 10g) and put them in the freezer until used.
• Gather the ingredients for the dough, bread flour, milk powder, sugar, salt, yeast, water, and butter. (You need to melt the butter before using)

In a Bread Machine

I used my bread machine to make the dough. You can do it in a stand mixer with a dough hook or knead by hand if desired.

Add all the ingredients with the poolish and knead till elastic dough.

By hand

• Place the poolish, bread flour, sugar, salt, milk powder, and yeast in a large mixing bowl. Stir with a wooden spoon to mix all ingredients well.
• Add the melted butter and water to the flour mixture and mix until forms a shaggy dough. And then knead the dough for a few minutes in the bowl to form a ball, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
• Lightly dust a work surface with flour and then again knead the dough until it becomes smooth and elastic for about 10 minutes.

The First Rise

• If you kneaded by hand or stand mixer, shape the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover it with greased plastic wrap and a damp tea towel. Let it rise at a temperature (of 25-30 C) until it is doubled in size.
• If you kneaded in a bread machine, the machine will simply switch to the rise portion of the cycle.

Shaping

Dust the workspace with flour. Place the dough onto the floured surface. Lightly oil your palms and degas by pressing the dough.

Divide the dough into 8 portions. Round them up into balls. Cover and let them rest for about 15 minutes. Work with one dough at a time and keep the rest covered.

• Take one piece of dough and roll it out into a long triangle shape using a rolling pin (as shown in the picture below).
• Place a piece of butter about 1 inch from the edge of the widest part of the triangle at the bottom.
• Fold the dough over and press and seal the dough around the butter with your fingers.

Roll up, starting with the wide end to the other end to shape like a crescent. Continue with the rest of the dough and butter. Place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet with some space to rise.

The Second Rise

Cover with a greased plastic wrap and then a kitchen towel and let them rest again until they are double in size for about 40 minutes.

• 10 minutes before the end of proofing, preheat your oven to 210C.
• Brush the surface of the bread with water.

Sprinkle with some coarse salt or pretzel salt.

Baking

• When baking, I used a boiling water bath. Put a pan of boiling water on the shelf below the dough when you put it in the oven.
• Bake in the preheated oven, middle rack, for 13 to 15 minutes. Rotate the pan from front to back after 10 minutes.
• The butter will slowly melt during baking, don’t panic. It’s normal. This melted butter will crisp up the bottom of the bread
• Remove from the oven and let cool on a cooling rack.

Japanese Shio Pan (Salted Butter Rolls)
Printable Recipe

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