What Is “Salt Bread” and Why Do We Already Know We Need 50 of Them?

We all know Salt Bae, but have you heard of Salt Bread? These days, we prefer bread to bae anyway, so we were really excited to learn about a buttery roll that’s making its rounds on social media. 

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What is salt bread?

Salt bread is a combination of a croissant’s buttery flavor and Japanese milk bread’s soft texture. It’s known in Japan as “shio pan,” which, in English, means “shove 50 of them into our mouth.” It’s a loose translation. (Just kidding, it translates to salt bread.)

After a decade of increasing popularity in East Asia, the bread is only just picking up in the U.S., accompanied by social media posts like “how-to” videos, spliced with entrancing footage of golden-brown, salt-topped rolls that are torn open to reveal a hollow center surrounded by pillow-y goodness. 

The technical side of things: how salt bread is made

As is the case with most bread, this is a science. This isn’t a “close your eyes and throw it together and hope it works” case. Unless maybe you’re Paul Hollywood or sourdough starter runs through your veins, you’d best follow a recipe and remember the first rule of bread-baking: Bread can smell fear.

There are plenty of content creators and bakers offering their take on the delicacy, but the base dough is similar to Japanese milk bread. Many variations use a tangzhong starter (a cooked slurry of flour and liquid like water or milk), and are enriched with milk and butter, and seasoned with salt.

They’re shaped by rolling the dough into long, flat triangles that are bookended by a nub of butter, then rolled again so that the butter ends up encased in the center of the bread. During the bake, the butter melts, the water evaporates, and the bread is left much like we are: hollow inside but doused in butter and covered in salt. 

That sounds too hard to make, where can I buy salt bread?

If you don’t want to make it, we don’t blame you. U.S. dwellers can find it in certain eateries like Dallas’s Childish Bakery or Justin’s Salt Bread in NYC. Meanwhile, in Korea, you can find entire chains for this yeasted delight, like Jayeondo Salt Bread. We don’t want to say our priorities in the States are wrong, but…would our nation really not benefit from a salt-bread chain?