Seasoned Advice is a question and answer site for professional and amateur chefs. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have been living in Japan for 1 year now, but I cannot find French bread - baguette - in Tokyo like the one we have in France.
Their bread is not crunchy nor crispy at all, and it's chewy, I kind of feel like I am eating a sponge... like old bread.
What is the difference between the bread made in Japan and the one we have in France? Do they use different flour, different way of baking? Do they wait for the bread to become chewy before selling it?
I'm a professional bread baker from 2018. I started learning by my self until I open my shop in China. I was living in Japan and Brazil also and I had the same experience when I moved to Japan.
Now I know why the Asian bread is different from European bread.
The major basic components are totally different. The basic flour is also different.
In France, they are classified like T55, T65, T45, etc...
These numbers mean the percentage of ash contents in the bread and the percentage of proteins inside the flour. Asian bread is almost like T45 and T55 flour. Some flours are special for soft bread or toast loaf bread.
The french Baguette use T55 as traditional French Baguette and T65 for more hard French Baguette use, and also are added semolina to show that yellow golden color and help also to be more crispy like pizza dough.
Almost of Japanese bread useT45 or special flour T55 to make soft bread but also adding milk, sugar, butter , cream to be more soft and sweet. almost of Asia peoples don't no how to eat French baguette, as after turn cold will be super hard even to eat it. Its come from culture as they no have oven in their home and also normally just buy and eat without adding jam, or ham, or butter etc. Cause this is not their culture to do. Soft bread even cold can eat easy and inside is stuffed with several tastes to be not necessary spent time to cut, add other ingredients.
When I start make bread in 10 peoples only one buy French baguette and whole-wheat bread. They prefer soft bread and stuffed sweet bread or salty with cheese , salsage etc...
As I love French baguette, I refuse make soft bread for two reasons, one simple french salt bread is more healthy and second as we start plant base style bread, avoid use milk, butter, white sugar etc...
I choose smaller market and healthy than choose best seller soft bread.
Actually we have a lot of fans enjoying my bread.
One of the best known (if not the best known) breads in Japan is, in fact, very much like a brioche. Japanese Milk Bread contains butter and egg, it also contains a fair amount of sugar. The Japanese think of bread more like a sweet than a staple. Another sweet bread known in Japan is Maple Bread, it's even sweeter and really does taste like maple syrup.
If you are looking for something more like a French Baguette, Catija's advice in comments is excellent. The Japanese aren't big into sandwiches. The Vietnamese, however, have a huge French influence (whether they want it or not). The bread traditionally used for Banh Mi is a short baguette. If you ask for Banh Mi in Tokyo, someone will know just what you mean.
While I am not 100% sure what you are eating and looking for and am relatively new to bread making myself, I'm going to guess that what it comes down to is a matter of fat content in the bread.
What gets called "French Bread" (in the baguette sense) is usually a mixture of flour, water, salt, and yeast (similar to the recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice). It uses a pre-ferment (usually pâte fermentée, which is itself just flour, water, salt, and yeast) in combination with a mixture of flours to produce the final loaf.
Variations on this (e.g., pain de campagne) which maintain that characteristic texture still basically come down to a mixture of flours, walter, salt, and yeast. These are what can be characterized as lean breads: breads with very little (if any) fat added.
My guess is that most of the "chewy" breads you are encountering have a higher fat content. These are more like what in the US we'd call an "Italian" bread (which is frequently shaped in a similar manner to some french loaves, another example would be breads like Challah bread) all the way up to something like a brioche (which has a very high fat percentage). The fat adds some flavor and can provide a sort of softer mouth feel, which is what I suspect you are picking up on.
I think that different countries (including France and Japan) use flour with different ash and protein content.
eg. I cannot create the proper chewy/crunchy texture for baguettes, using the kind of flour commonly available in my own country. (And actually, I can't make very soft Japanese bread with our flour either).
French flour for baguettes use type 65 flour, which is high in ash and protein. It helps create the chewy, strong texture of the bread you are used to. I suspect the French type 65 flour is not commonly used or available in Japan. The characteristics of the standard flour used in different countries vary a lot, producing very different textures in baking products, even if they are called similar/same names (eg.'bread flour'). I think Japanese (and Asian) flour has a composition that can only produce very, very soft style breads and cakes.
