Here’s a list of Yakitate Ja-pan recipes I’ve gathered together. The list isn’t nearly complete, but it’s a start, and I’ll be filling in the gaps as I find and try more recipes. Some are actual recipes for the specific Yakitate Ja-pan. Others are the closest equivalents I could find in the real world. As the Yakitate series goes on, the breads become more and more fictional, so it’s unlikely we’ll find ways to make every one of them. I got the basic list from wiki and then added my notes and links. Hope you find it useful, or maybe just entertaining. ♥

Here’s a list of all of the Ja-pan and their descriptions.

===

• Ja-pan #1 – Soymilk Pan

I’m not sure if it tastes good with natto, but here’s a recipe in Japanese for soyamilk bread.

• Ja-pan #2 – Suihanjapan (Bread baked in a rice cooker)
  

Baking bread in a rice cooker.  I tried this recipe. The results were good, but pretty dense. I need to figure out hwo to lighten the dough… Here’s a translation of the original video following the anime.

• Ja-pan #3 manga version – Microwave Pan with sesame seeds.

• Ja-pan #8 – King Turtle Bread

The closest equivalent I could find was recipes for melon pan. But on CookPad, search for カメのメロンパン and you’ll find 2 recipes. This one looks the closest. Here’s a mini-mini melon pan recipe! (I like this recipe because it let’s you use any soft white bread you want for the center, and all you have to do is wrap the bread with the crispy sugar coating! With a little food coloring and decorations, I can make an army of mini-turtle melon pan!)

• Ja-pan #9: Taiyaki (鯛焼き) bread

There are a lot of recipes for Taiyaki, but they’re all pretty simple and almost the same. Here’s a Japanese recipe that shows each step and alternate cooking options (just in case you didn’t want to run out and buy a taiyaki pan).

But if you want a Taiyaki pan, there are a few options. You can get a taiyaki mold which you cook over a burner, or there are kitchen electronics that resemble waffle makers, or sandwich makers, that have forms for taiyaki. Amazon.co.jp carries a couple, but the one that I like is called Vitantonio because it has interchangeable plates which allow you to also use it to make all kinds of other things. Plus, clean up is easier with removable plates. What I don’t like about the taiyaki molds you cook over a stove, is that the batter tends to leak out and then you’ve got to clean the burner.

The following are video clips from a variety show that often tries strange ingredients in traditional dishes and rates them on a scale of 1 to 10. I wouldn’t recommend these recipes… but they seemed to like some of them. (potato salad (9), grapefruit (1), chili shrimp (5), Frisk mints (X), cherry tomatoes (3), onigiri (2), hot dogs (6), Agi (6), omochi (0),  ginger (3), ??? (XX), ??? (2)) This is about taiyaki:

Update: It looks like they took these videos off YouTube. The variety show is called VVV6 and the subject changes often, but every now and then there’s interesting food trials. If I find any new videos I’ll post them here.

• Ja-pan #10: Soaked Millet Ja-pan (Low-carb Diet Ja-pan)

I found an interesting post on The Fresh Loaf by an individual who was learning to bake with millet in Japan. Here’s an excerpt of what he had to say, “Millet is rather popular in Japan, I would guess, but I only know of it being used west of Tokyo, especially for sweets (eg, ‘kibi-dango‘, which is famous in Okayama.) Apparently, there are at least four different names for this grain in Japanese: Awa, Kibi, Kimi and Hie. I bought the ‘awa’ and ‘hie’ types which look vaguely similar. The ‘awa’ is golden and a little larger than poppy-seeds; the ‘hie’ is a tad larger and kind of “drab” in color—whitish-brown. [One available variety of “Kibi” was almost the size of black peppercorns…If my information is correct, the “hie” type is also known as “barnyard millet” in some circles.”

As for more detailed information about Millet check out this article which is quite helpful as well.

• Ja-pan #12: Choco-coronette

I’ve made these many times. Check here for full article.

• Ja-pan #15: Autodigested Japanese barnyard millet
• Ja-pan #15 (variant): Autodigested Nanshõkasei wheat flour (a bread targeting high school girls)
• Ja-pan #16: Mt.Fuji Curry Ja-pan (actually Indian “Naan”)
• Ja-pan #21: Budding Wheat Flour Castella Ja-pan

Castella was covered in the article about K-On!

• Ja-pan #22: Kamaboko Ja-pan
• Ja-pan #24: (presumed to be Hanako-milk (goat’s milk) Butter Ja-pan)
• Ja-pan #24 (variant): Hanako-milk (goat’s milk) Butter French-Ja-pan
• Ja-pan #32: Wasabi Dinner Bread Ja-pan (it doesn’t spoil easily)
• Ja-pan #43: 324-Layer Croissant Ja-pan

Making croissant dough is time consuming and labor intensive. Make sure you use a good quality butter, otherwise you’ll get very flat croissants. I’ve only made croissant dough 3 times. The first was a disaster. The second time, I used a bit of dough I saved from the first batch, and mixed it into the new dough. The taste was much better, but the puff was still lacking. I tried over-folding the dough like in Yakitate. I didn’t get any burning, nor did I get the super croissant, I just got a rather dense croissant with a lot of butter. Anyways, the 3rd try yielded decent croissants, but for the amount of labor and time involved, I think I’ll buy them from my favorite Boulangerie. (On a side note: Trader Joes has some pretty good croissants in their frozen foods section.)

• Ja-pan #44: Heavenly Petalite Ja-pan
• Ja-pan #51: Garlic Sports bread
• Ja-pan #51 Kai (variant): Eel, Nori , Silk powder and Black-soybeans Sports bread for F-1 Racers
• Ja-pan #54: Anpan

This is my favorite anpan recipe.

• Ja-pan #55: “Anpan” (filled with Grandmother’s homemade an)
• Ja-pan #56: Black Ja-pan (originally a bread with rice bran, but replaced with a special ash from bamboo charcoal in episode 29)

Thanks to Alejandra for her inquiry into Bamboo-Charcoal (竹炭) Bread (麵包). It might sound like a strange bread, but this isn’t that uncommon in Chinese cooking. Here’s an article, in English, about the experience.

(The sign is on it’s side. LOL)

There’s a Chinese online recipe database that I like that I simply call YTower. It doesn’t have the greatest search engine, but the recipes are usually all there, and there are even helpful videos. Here’s a video that I found for Bamboo-Charcoal French Baguettes.

The recipe is:

bamboo charcoal bread
Ingredients: French bread powder 800g, sea salt 15g, fine malt 2g, sugar-speed yeast 4g, water 590g, charcoal powder 1 tablespoon

Practices:
1. Bread flour, charcoal powder mixed with water absorption mix, relaxation for 20 minutes.
2. Malt in essence add to dough, then add yeast, salt.
3. Table sprinkle flour, knead dough, add a little salad oil surface of dough, then put me 1 hour fermentation.
4. Dough is separated into 3 equal parts, covered with cling film to relax for 10 minutes.
5. Dough is formed into a long roll and baked in an oven lit 250 / 220 Celsius degrees under fire, or on / under the fire of 220 degrees, bake 15 minutes until the bread has the flexibility to the waist.

Roughly translated (via Google Translate) from:

bamboo charcoal bread
材料 : 法國麵包粉800g、海鹽15g、麥芽精2g、低糖速酵母4g、水590g、竹炭粉1 大匙

做法：
1.麵包粉、竹炭粉與水混合抓勻，鬆弛20分鐘。
2.麥芽精加入麵糊中，再加入酵母粉、鹽。
3.桌上灑麵粉，將麵糰取出揉成光亮，麵糰表面抹上少許沙拉油，再放入發酵箱1小時。
4.麵糰分割成3等份，將麵糰四周抓起，接口向上，蓋上保鮮膜鬆弛10分鐘。
5.麵糰整形滾長成條狀，放入烤箱上火250/下火220度，或上/下火220度，烘 烤15分鐘到麵包腰部有彈性即可。

It seems that the bamboo-charcoal can be added to any bread recipe. The key seems to be to also add a little malt sugar to the recipe to enhance it’s flavor. The charcoal bread dough may also need a little more water than usual, however it will tend to hold moisture in the bread once baked.

• Ja-pan #57: Kabukiage Leftover Ja-pan
• Ja-pan #58: Sushi-style Melon Ja-pan
• Ja-pan #59: Okonomiyaki-sandwich with Yakisoba filling
• Ja-pan #60: “Sticky and Stretchy” Vital Gluten Ja-pan
• Ja-pan #61: Taima Bread Donut

Side note(s):

I found a great website for baking enthusiasts: The Fresh Loaf.