About a year-ish ago, I made sourdough shio pan using my sourdough starter Horacio. Shio pan is a Japanese pastry, literally translating to mean “salt bread”. I like making it from time to time, and I have made sourdough variations of it in the past with my starter! The funniest thing was that I did store my starter in the refrigerator during the winter, and then started re-feeding it recently, just so that I could jump start some fun sourdough baking experiments again! While yes, I did make sourdough shio pan already, I did NOT make the shio pan with a red bean(anko) filling, so I figured, why not revisit that recipe, but with two key differences. The first, like I mentioned already, was a red bean filling. I totally forgot I had dried red beans in my pantry, and wanted to actually use them in something. The thing about red bean paste is that it takes TIME. You usually need to soak the dried red beans overnight, then you have to cook them with water for hours until they’re soft, then you would add the sugar to sweeten the paste to make it desert-ready. In the case of this recipe, I experimented with pressure cooking the red beans with a high ratio of water, then adding to them miso paste and condensed milk, just to give them a rich texture and sweet flavor. This filling is delicious in pastries, on toast, or even on shaved ice, so it is a fairly versatile component! The second variation to the sourdough shio pan I made a year ago was the dough itself. I was playing around with making pate choux dough, then mixing that with bread dough. This was a method inspired by Japanese milk bread, where you make a cooked flour-milk mixture, called a tangzhong, and then mix that into the bread dough for a soft, springier loaf. The pate choux, being so enriched with eggs and butter, gives the final dough a tender crumb, so it is like a hybrid between a brioche and a milk bread, and with the sourdough used in that, it’s gut healthy as well!

This recipe, by nature of the components, will take time and patience. Red bean paste takes a while to make already, but my version uses a pressure cooker to expedite a ton of that process. Bread dough of any kind, especially sourdough, will need a decent amount of time(like we’re talking 6-8 hours) to proof properly. So this is not something you make in an hour or two. You may have an hour of actual active work, but there is a lot of waiting involved in between. So just keep that in mind. In terms of actual difficulty, I would only give this recipe a 3/10, mostly because actually executing the recipe itself does not take a ton of precision, but rather, you just have to wait a while. Just make sure that the anko is fully cooled before you attempt to fill the shio pan dough with that, otherwise you may cause the dough to warp/kill the starter. The fun part of this recipe is definitely shaping the dough; you roll out these ovular pieces and basically wrap the anko and salted butter around it. What I adore about shio pan is that it greatly looks like a croissant, but it is tender, soft bread(kind of like if you mess up on a croissant), so they are just an easy, reliable breakfast pastry to make!

Makes 16 shio pan:
For the anko:
3oz azuki beans
25oz water
.5oz white miso paste
8oz sweetened condensed milk

Place the azuki beans and water into a pressure cooker and cook for 60 minutes. After slowly releasing the pressure, carefully remove the lid and allow the liquid to reduce on low heat until the mixture resembles peanut butter in consistency. At this point, add in the remaining ingredients and stir until the mixture thickens back to a peanut butter-like consistency. Allow the paste to fully cool before attempting to use.

For the pate choux batter:
1/2 cup milk
a pinch of salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg
.2oz canola oil

In a pot, heat up the flour, salt, and butter, bringing everything to a boil. Once the butter is fully melted, add in the flour and stir everything on medium heat until everything mixes into a glossy ball of dough. Take the pot off heat and stir in the egg and canola oil.

For the dough:
Pate choux batter
2 cups all-purpose flour
2oz sourdough starter
2oz whole milk

In a bowl, mix together your pate choux with the flour, starter, and milk until a dough forms. Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 2 hours before allowing the dough to sit in the refrigerator for another 4 hours.

For assembly:
8 tbsp salted butter, cut into 1/2 tbsp-sized rectangles
1 egg, beaten
Maldon salt

Divide the dough into 16 pieces. Roll the dough pieces to elongated ovals. Place on one end the butter rectangle and 2 tbsp of anko and roll up the dough to form a crescent turnover shape. Place the pastries onto a parchment-lined sheet tray, spacing them 2 inches apart. Brush the tops of the dough with beaten egg, then sprinkle Maldon salt on top of the doughs. Allow the shaped pastries to rest at room temperature for another hour before baking at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes.