Japanese foodie culture is of the opinion that food shouldn’t just taste good, but look good too. Of course, “looking good” includes a broad range of possibilities, from appearances that convey opulent luxury to rustic purity..
.and, in the case of the latest creation from bakery chain Kimuraya Sohonten, irresistible cuteness. It turns out there’s a hue of brown that equally conveys “mouthwatering baked goods” and “cuddly forest critter,” and that’s exactly the degree to which Kimuraya bakes its new tanuki bread.
Inspired by Japan’s lovable “raccoon dogs,” the latest entry in the bakery’s revolving animal bread series just went on sale at the start of this month. In Japanese folklore, tanuki are known as mischievous shapeshifting tricksters, and so, fittingly, there’s a surprise to the tanuki bread. Thankfully, the twist here is a happy one for us humans, as the inside of the tanuki bread is filled with chocolate cream.
Coming out of Kimuraya’s ovens at the same time as the tanuki bread is a new seasonal melon bread variation, which takes the Japanese bakery staple of a dome-shaped bun with a lightly crunchy sugar-dusted top and fills it with kabocha-infused sweet bean jam. While kabocha is often translated as “Japanese pumpkin,” it has a stronger natural sweetness than the type of pumpkin used to carve jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween (as one of our taste-testing reporters recently, and traumatically, confirmed). The tanuki bread (officially c.