Japanese Sweet Boule or Hat Bread

Today’s baking is a Japanese sweet boule.

I knew this type of bread but didn’t even know what it was called. Apparently the name came from combination of English and French. “Sweet”, obviously an English word. On the other hand, “Boule” is a French, meaning “Ball” in English.

I googled the word and I only could find it in Japanese recipe, so I assume “Sweet Boule” is a Japanese name???

Alternatively “Hat Bread” is something similar to Sweet Boule. Maybe it’s easier to imagine what it looks like?

Ingredients:

Cookie Dough

• Butter: 50g
• Sugar: 50g
• Egg: 1 (about 45~50g)
• All purpose flour: 50g

Bread Dough

• Bread Flour: 200g + few teaspoons as needed.
• Sugar: 25g
• Salt: 4g
• Dry Yeast: 4g
• Milk: 140g
• Butter: 25g

Direction:

1. Starting with making a cookie dough. Bring the butter to a room temperature and mix well until it turns like a cream.

2. Add sugar little by little and mix well.

3. Beat an egg and add it to 2 as you mix.

4. Add flour into the bowl and mix well. Then, pour the cookie dough into a ziploc or pastry bag. Leave it in a refrigerator.

5. Now, we are making a bread dough. Add everything except for butter into a bowl.

6. Once the ingredients are mixed well, add butter. If the dough is too wet or sticky, add extra bread flour. I used about 3 extra teaspoons of bread flour.

7. Then, knead the dough for about 15min or until the dough gets smooth. When it’s done, put a plastic wrap over the bowl and leave it for an hour.

8. When the dough is twice the size, take the gas out and divide the dough into 9.

9. Put a plastic wrap over it, and leave it for 45min or until the dough is 1.5 to twice the size.

10. Pre-heat the oven to 395F. Take the cookie dough out from the fridge and cut the corner of the ziploc bag. Place the cookie dough on the bread dough in a spiral from the center (like shown in the pic below)

11. Add toping if you prefer. I used matcha powder and cocoa powder. It’s nice to have an sliced almond too!

12. When the oven is done with pre-heating, drop the temperature to 375F and bake for 15 min. (Adjust the time as needed) I used about 5 min extra to make the cookie dough nice brown.

13. When it’s baked, take it out from the oven and leave it out to cool down. Ready to serve 💛 Outside is crispy and inside is fluffy 🙂