Crispy Honey Butter Toast

A little something sweet for a perfect brunch.

Hi Bakers!

I’ve been dreaming up a sweet, dessert-like toast for a while now. Something crisp and buttery with a creamy topping. The ultimate ending to a spectacular brunch. 

Here it is folks: Blueberries ‘n Cream Honey Butter Toast.

I love fluffy pancakes, crisp Belgian waffles, and custardy French toast. Dessert disguised as breakfast? You know I’m there. But for this recipe, I wanted to make something truly crunchy and soft at the same time. 

You are going to love this recipe. It has the crispest caramelized honey crust on the most pillow-like bread you will ever eat. You can scale it up or down. I imagine serving it for Easter brunch or doing a winter spiced version at Christmas. Make just two slices on a loved one’s birthday for a special breakfast treat.

I stumbled upon Arôme Bakery and discovered their golden slabs of honey toast around the time our editor was coming back from the Sapporo Snow Fest in Japan. After hearing stories from the trip and dreaming up my own snow day treat, I combined the two ideas. I used a Yoichi blueberry and cinnamon jam gifted from Exclamation Bakery in combination with crunchy, sweet shokupan toast to create this recipe. 

It begins with a soft and pillowy Japanese milk bread, or shokupan. This brioche-like bread uses a tangzhong to start. Tangzhong is a bread making technique that mixes a roux of flour and milk or water with the yeast dough ingredients. It results in a super soft, enriched dough with a dozen uses (French toast, bread pudding, fruit sandwiches, chicken katsu sandwiches, any sandwich - for that matter).

I baked the shokupan in a Pullman pan to create the perfect loaf. This type of pan has straight sides and an optional lid often used to make sandwich bread. My shokupan grew to the tallest, fluffiest pillows, so make sure you are using a big enough pan (see Baker’s Notes).

For the recipe, cut the baked bread into thick slices. Even if you have a Pullman pan, you will want to trim off all of the sides and crust to make perfect slabs of bread. Next, spread a paste of super soft butter, brown sugar, and honey on all sides.

The bread is baked in the oven where the honey paste caramelizes all over. It won’t look like much while it’s baking. You’ll likely question what is even going on, but trust the process. As the toast cools, the caramelized coating crisps up, encapsulating the pillow-soft center.

You could eat the honey toast straight up with zero complaints, or go full-out with whipped cream and blueberries. The jam I used had hints of cinnamon and clove, but a lemony blueberry compote is also bright and delicious.

Let’s get to the recipe…