Chigiri-pan (ちぎりパン, pull-apart bread)

Chigiri-pan begins with a pleasant little contradiction: you work for neatness so the bread can be torn apart. Sixteen small balls of dough sit shoulder to shoulder in a square tin, and in the oven they rise into one soft loaf that gives way by hand. This is the sort of bread many Japanese home cooks buy at the panya counter, but a domestic oven can make it honestly if you give the dough time and equal pieces.

People hesitate at yeast dough because it seems alive in an inconvenient way. It is alive, yes, but not cleverer than you. The first secret here is yudane (湯種), flour scalded with boiling water. The heat gelatinizes the starch before the dough is mixed, so that flour holds water instead of letting it bake away. That is why the crumb stays soft the next day, not only proud on the day you bake it.

Japanese bread baking has two plain foundations. The straight method (ストレート, straight) mixes the dough in one sequence and is useful when the clock is bossy. Yudane takes five extra minutes and gives you the soft, pull-apart texture we want here. Chigiri-pan is not old kaiseki food, of course. It belongs to the panya, the weekday table, the lunch box, and the late cup of tea, which is a serious territory of its own.

The detail that decides it is the rounding. Weigh the pieces, tuck each ball under itself until the skin is smooth, then set them close but not crushed. Weak rounding gives you lopsided rolls; good tension gives each one a thin golden edge and a tender white tear. Leave the loaf a little room, even in the tin. Bread behaves better when it isn't bullied.