Why I Stopped Making Tangzhong the Popular Way | 24 Hour Method for Softer Bread

At a glance, the tangzhong method is the viral secret to making softer and fluffier bread that lasts for longer, using just flour, water, and heat. That is the simple story that shows up everywhere. But what if I told you that we got almost all of it wrong? From the myth of fluffy tangzhong to the temperature of 65 degrees Celsius, Western bakers are being shown a method that's been stripped of its identity and the real science behind it. In this video, we're debunking the Tangzhong myths, finding out how it actually works, and I'm going to show you the best way to make it, based on science. You're about to see the Tangzhong method as you've never seen it before. Let's get into it. To define it simply, the Tangzhong method, also known as the Yudane method, requires only three things. Flour, water, and heat. Whatever variation you see online always boils down to adding flour to water at a temperature beyond 65 degrees Celsius. You let that cool to room temperature and then add it to your bread dough. In countless English YouTube videos and recipes on tangzhong, you will inevitably hear the words fluffy, light, and airy. That makes sense, because fluffiness is a major overarching goal for many Western or English-speaking bakers. Good bread is supposed to be fluffy, light, and voluminous. But if you dive into the original Japanese and Chinese sources, tangzhong or yudane bread is never described as fluffy. And I think it's probably because of two things. One, the tangzhong method generally does not make bread fluffier. This is supported by a lot of science. The gelatinized starch in tangzhong actually weakens the gluten network and results in issues with gas retention. So it usually causes problems with bread volume. And two, fluffy bread was never the goal for these Asian bakers. You see, there are plenty of dough improvers and methods designed to ensure bread becomes voluminous and airy. What there aren't a lot of, however, are methods to make bread incredibly soft while being a little bit chewy. This chewiness is a concept that is barely talked about in Western discourse on tangzhong or yudane. It's never the focus of recipes, which is so ironic given that it was what spawned the original runaway success of the method. To start with, although the idea of mixing flour with hot water has a history in many countries around the world, this specific method and its use in making softer white breads originated in Japan, where it's called yudane. On one New Year's Eve in 1997, a general manager of a large Japanese bread corporation went out to greet longtime clients and resellers. His cheery day quickly turned sour when a client mentioned that his wife actually preferred bread from a rival company. The reason? Because it had a distinct soft and chewy texture. In Japanese, this texture is so significant, it's got its own term, mochi mochi referring to japanese mochi in our story the general manager was horrified when he realized that their bread lacked this very texture the company went into heavy research which we're going to get into later but for now all you need to know is that this company is still one of the largest in japan and the bread they made has been number one in white supermarket breads for years And the secret is, of course, the Yudane method with a little twist. I do wonder if this general manager would be shocked to realize that one of the fundamental reasons behind why Yudane and Tangzhong became so popular in Asia is often absent from newer resources on the method these days. The uniqueness of this bread has been replaced with a general makes bread fluffier tag. We'll come back to this story in a bit. But for now, it's time to begin the chaos and explain how yudane and tangzhong became two different methods, as well as how the fluffy myth probably began. If Japan was the start of the method, then Taiwan was one of the first places it really started spreading to. According to one source, yudane bread was brought to Taiwan by 7-Eleven stores, which probably gave people a taste for soft and chewy bread. but it truly started taking off online when a Taiwanese baker wrote a widely spread book called 65 Degrees Celsius Bread Doctor. This is what I consider as the first language barrier crossed. Yudane, a Japanese method, was introduced by this Taiwanese baker to a new market, and importantly, the book was written in traditional Chinese. Naturally, she didn't invent a new term for a method that already had a name. She simply took the Japanese kanji characters for yudane and stuffed them into her Chinese book. The exact same two characters read as yudane in Japanese became tangzhong when read in Chinese, so they are literally interchangeable terms. But then the book became widely popular amongst Chinese diaspora, and they translated it into English. So now for people who are new to things, there were two methods in the world, tangzhong and yudane. To make things even more chaotic, the way of making tangzhong that this book popularized was pretty different from many of the original Japanese techniques. This is the same problematic method I talked about three years ago. One part flour to five parts water that is commonly shared online. Because I think one, it's actually confusing something that's very simple, and two, it has some serious limitations that result in you not being able to get the full benefit from the method. The key feature of this method is that it calls for mixing a lot of water with the flour before cooking it in a pan. And I do suspect that this highly diluted way of making tangzhong might be why the method end up being falsely associated with extreme fluffiness. You see, the book itself never claimed this method would make bread fluffier. But because the amount of flour that can be used in a 1 to 5 ratio of flour to water is so incredibly small, the actual effect of the tangzhong on bread volume is likely to be truly negligible. Basically, you can't add more flour without adding 5 times the amount of water. So recipes using this method often only use about 5% of their total bread flour. According to one scientific paper, when adding a small amount of gelatinized flour, the bread remains relatively close to the control loaf in size. The loaf with the smallest amount of gelatinized flour added retained about 96.4% of its original height. This very slight, almost unnoticeable change in volume might be how bakers ended up connecting the idea of tangzhong with maximum fluffiness. We can actually see how this misunderstanding happened in one of the earlier blog posts about the Tang zhong method in 2010. While talking about a recipe from this book, this blogger makes a direct jump from what the book says about softness and ends up emphasizing fluffiness. In another post, she mentions that the reason the method itself works is in part by making the bread fluffier. This is what I think of as the second language barrier crossed. And the true tragedy is that this fluffy myth has actually covered up where the method truly shines. And all of this chaos doesn't help us figure out how to properly use this method based on science. It's time to go back to that Japanese bread company story. The company launched a bread called Chojuku, which turned out to be a pretty genius move because Chojuku become the absolutely number one white bread on the market from 2019 all the way to 2024. This was based on data for 15 years old to 79 years old. So you know it was popular from grandchildren to grandparents. And the company is quite open about their patented production method. However, it's important to know what they actually patented wasn't the Yudane method itself. Their original patent notes the method was already well known, even back in 1999. What they patented was their specific process of making and aging the mixture for 15 up to 72 hours at cold temperatures. In their renewed patent, they've made some changes, but ultimately still let their mixture sit at cold temperatures for 24 to 72 hours. Their explanation was that this cold rest is meant to prevent the bread from caving in, which is a notorious downside of the method. However, according to a comprehensive thesis on the subject, this step of letting the tangzhong rest in the fridge might also be beneficial for improving bread quality and long-term softness. This thesis states that bread made with tangzhong refrigerated for exactly 24 hours, was among the absolute softest right after baking. And after three days, it had the best anti-staling effect. Now, if you're impatient and you can't wait a full day to make your tangzhong, then your best bet is to use it immediately while it's fresh. Bread made with zero-hour tangzhong was also incredibly soft and retained that softness for days. But here's where you have to be careful. Outside of those two specific timings, you enter a textural danger zone. If you leave the tangzhong out at room temperature for, say, 12 hours, or leave it in the fridge for 48 hours, the science shows it might actually make your bread a bit harder than it has to be, so it's best to use it right away or wait a day. That rhymes. The softness was also influenced by how much tangzhong was used. 10-20% tangzhong resulted in the softest bread in this thesis, whereas percentages above 20% resulted in increasingly harder bread. This finding is a little troublesome because another paper found the opposite result. And very important note, softness is not only influenced by how we make the tangzhong or let it rest, it's also influenced by how we make the bread dough with tangzhong. And we'll see later on how we can probably make our bread much softer than these results. In terms of volume, the thesis states that the tangzhong rested for 24 hours in cold storage, had almost no significant differences and negative effect on bread volume up to a 30% addition, which could be considered a way to minimize the volume loss usually associated with the method. I will note, though, that thesis did find that adding 10% tangzhong that was used immediately without rest resulted in a slight increase in bread volume by about 0.9%, but this wasn't statistically significant, so the increase in volume might not be because of the 10% tangzhong. And to add to that, if you check the hardness of this bread in the thesis, it was actually higher compared to certain other loaves that had a lower volume. So the increased volume did not make the bread that much softer. Another interesting thing I found was that many of these textural changes are likely to be unnoticeable on the day the bread is baked. In the same thesis, the sensory panel who tested the bread didn't significantly prefer any specific tangzhong aging or resting methods. but in texture analysis, there were differences on the first day and then on the second or third days, these differences in hardness and chewiness widened further. Personally, I also find that using cold refrigerated tangzhong lowers the overall mixing temperature of your dough, which can drastically improve gluten strength and final bread volume. Just don't age it for too long in the fridge or the volume of the bread might start to degrade even more. Now, this step isn't the only thing that you barely hear about in most English sources. So before we start tweaking recipes, we have to correct the fundamental misunderstandings of the science. We have to ask, how does this method actually work? You might have heard that tangzhong or yudane is simply a way of binding water to the dough. The common wisdom is that because it locks moisture inside, the resulting bread is softer and stales much slower. But that is only a fraction of the full picture. In most explanations, including my own previous videos, we tend to focus entirely on gelatinized starch. Flour contains starch granules that swell up and absorb water. As the heat rises, they absorb more and more until eventually they explode. This is starch gelatinization. According to a Japanese paper from 2014, adding this mix to bread makes it softer and delays staling due to three things. First off, as mentioned, tangzhong holds onto moisture. The more you use, the more moisture is maintained. But beyond that, because the tangzhong method destroys starch granules, it also makes them highly susceptible to enzymes already present in wheat flour. These enzymes are like tiny scissors and they basically chop up a sizable portion of the complex starches into bits and pieces, transforming them from large complex sugars into much simpler ones. These simpler sugars may weaken the cross links between starch and gluten that normally cause bread to feel more firm during staling. So this could be another way tangzhong makes bread softer for longer. As a bonus, simpler sugars are also the ones our tongues can easily taste, which is why tangzhong bread has a mildly sweeter flavor and browns well in the oven. Now, we're not done yet, because the same enzymatic process that creates simpler sugars can also slow staling due to its effect on what's called starch retrogradation. You see, when we are making tangzhong with the hot water, again, we essentially tear apart the starch into bits and pieces. But retrogradation is kind of the opposite process. This is when the starch bits reassemble and crystallize after being torn apart. This would be perfectly fine if it weren't connected to the bread getting harder during staling. The new structure of the starch components after retrogradation is a tight and rigid structure that is pretty much the main cause of bread staling. Retrogradation happens in bread after you bake it. Once it cools, it starts the process. And as we leave the bread for longer, the harder the bread gets. However, if we add tangzhong, we get a lot of damaged starch components that have been chopped up by the enzymes. And what this does is result in a bunch of complex sugars that have shorter outer chains. And because these complex sugars now have much shorter chains, they find it much more difficult to crystallize and retrograde. Simply put, the bread physically cannot go stale as fast. So far, that's a standard scientific story. You might have already heard of the benefits of gelatinized starch before. you might have even heard of some of the things I've said before, but as it turns out, there is yet another element to this process, which is heated gluten. Okay, so flour doesn't just contain starch. It contains gluten proteins, which you probably know because they hold the entire dough together and allow it to trap gas cells too. According to this paper, when these gluten proteins are heated, they physically change, becoming capable of holding onto significantly more water. Not only that, adding this heated gluten to bread dough can actually make bread fluffier for real this time. This study recorded volume increases and improved softness too, especially for gluten heated to 75 degrees Celsius and 80 degrees Celsius. Now, this was also an incredibly ironic scientific discovery. In previous studies, researchers actually believed this partially denatured gluten was a problem. They blamed it for the decreased bread volume. Heck, in my previous videos, I blamed it too. But as it turns out, this partially denatured heated gluten actually leads to better bread with a higher volume and delayed staling. So knowing all of this, how do we actually improve our bread's volume and extract the absolute most out of the Tangzhong method? Here is my newly updated science-backed way to do it. First, we need to choose the right flour. Keeping what we learned about heated gluten in mind, I think it's logical to speculate that the papers shows exactly why we should be using high-protein bread flour to make our tangzhong. More protein means more heated gluten, which means a softer, longer-lasting loaf, hopefully. After that, we determine the amount of flour we want to use. For the rest of the video, we're going to show the amount of tangzhong used as the percentage of total flour used to make it. So for a recipe with 100 grams of bread flour in total, if we're using 20 grams of the flour to make tangzhong, then we are using 20% tangzhong or tangzhong 20. For help on determining what percentage of tangzhong you want for your bread, you can skip ahead to the timestamp where I talk about tangzhong percentages in detail. For now, we determine the amount of water we want to add in. While a one-to-one ratio, in other words, equal parts water and flour is technically sufficient, I highly prefer pouring in about 1.5 to 2 times the amount of water to flour in grams. It makes it much easier to mix thoroughly and ensures the mixture holds its temperature. So for example, if I were using 50 grams of flour to make tangzhong, I would aim to add at least 75 to 100 grams of water during this step. Next, let's figure out how to cook this. So you have two options here. You can either pop it in the microwave, which calls for mixing the flour and water together, then covering it and cooking it in the microwave for about one to two minutes. Or you can heat up a glass bowl before measuring water in and then throwing in the pre-measured flour, mixing it together. I've done this a million times in making my bread recipes, but recently I do prefer the microwave method because it allows the temperature to get much higher. Because while many of the recipes tell you to aim for 65 degrees Celsius, where 90% of the starch gelatinizes, that temperature completely ignores the benefits of the heated gluten we just talked about. The paper we showed earlier had the absolute best bread results happen when the gluten was heated to around 75 to 80 degrees Celsius, so we want to make sure that the tangzhong is getting hot enough. For the final step, we have to remember the element of time. Research shows that you're better off either using the tangzhong immediately for pretty soft bread or let it rest for 24 hours for the softest bread and potentially added gluten strength due to a colder dough. If you let the tangzhong sit at room temperature for too long, it can adversely affect your bread quality. Same thing goes for putting the tangzhong in the fridge, although the timing is longer. Beyond just making and storing it, we have to talk about how much tangzhong to actually put in your dough. Everything depends on your percentages. In many Japanese scientific papers, a standard recommended amount used is 20% of the total flour. But remember, the softness that these papers are measuring is that of a chewy marshmallow-like elasticity. If your ultimate goal is a hyper light, soft, and fluffy sensation, tangzhong will help a little, but you might want to use less of it and experiment with adding more solid fats like butter or shortening, which can increase bread volume. So let's break down exactly what happens at every level of tangzhong addition based on science. We start with 10% tangzhong. This is frequently cited as the optimal replacement level for casual bakers. It improves flavor and softness and acts as a pretty good anti-staling agent. While it does begin to slightly affect the structure, the loaf height does not drop as significantly as in loaves with higher amounts of tangzhong, following that at 20% tangzhong. This level of tangzhong addition is a pretty popular sweet spot for a lot of Asian breads like shokupang or other soft milk breads. Using this much tangzhong marks a significant shift in quality. The bread becomes very soft, incredibly moist, a little bit chewy, and stales at a pretty slow rate. Moisture content jumps significantly and the saccharide content increases, giving you a sweeter taste. However, you will start to note a more noticeable decrease in your specific loaf volume and your final proofing times might take a little longer. Moving on to 30% tangzhong. Several sources suggest this is the absolute ideal upper threshold. At 30%, the crumb remains exceptionally soft and the retardation of staling is at a very high level of effectiveness. However, the reduction in volume becomes quite stark. That being said, I have seen some recipes where this really works, like in cinnamon rolls or breads, where you're not too obsessed with the idea of a super fluffy crumb. Beyond 30%, we have 40% tangzhong. Welcome to the danger zone. This is where bread volume really starts to take a hit, and it's a percentage of tangzhong that is honestly beyond most applications. I've played around with this percentage of tangzhong, but I think it's probably not what most of us require. And next, we take a quick peek at 50% tangzhong. Crazy. At this level, the bread's height and volume decreases severely. This level requires the absolute longest proofing time because a weakened gluten network simply cannot retain fermentation gases. The dough becomes excessively soft, sticky, and a total nightmare to handle. So it's basically never used. Ever. Okay, we've gone through the science and you've picked your tangzhong percentage. A fast and quick tip before you just dump the tangzhong into the mixer, I highly recommend breaking it up in a separate bowl with a little bit of the water first. If you don't, it can form stubborn clumps inside your dough in some cases. But more importantly, here is the golden rule of recipe formulation with a tangzhong method. Tangzhong doughs can handle more water and in fact, you should probably add enough hydration. If you don't, your bread will probably go stale faster. Tangzhong acts like a sponge, preserving water. Because of this, you can safely push your dough's hydration limits to a little higher than normal. And you want to do this because water itself makes bread softer, and it also slows staling down directly. According to the paper, at 20% tangzhong, the dough's water absorption is closer to 72%, increasing from the control dough without tangzhong by about 2-3% water, so not exactly a ton of moisture, but of course this does depend on your flour as well. If your flour's original water absorption was lower, it can't handle as much water, and then you used 72% hydration, then you might end up with a much stickier and weaker dough. This is probably why it's a good idea to test out different hydrations and be clear on the properties of your flour. I will also note that whole wheat flours or other specialty flours often need a lot more water just because the bran present absorbs a lot as well. So if you're using tangzhong for those breads, you'll want to keep this in mind. When you mix the dough, you should also keep an eye on it. Tangzhong doughs feel stronger and more cohesive, but they are actually weaker and generally less resistant to extension. The same thesis we covered before also showed that they are less resistant to over mixing and have a lower stability, which means that it's not a good idea to mix them for too long past their peak. When you shape the dough, you might also notice this fact as the dough doesn't stretch quite as neatly or easily. I usually counter this by allowing the dough to rest before continuing to work on it. For the final tip, patience is key. Tangzhong doughs are absolutely going to take longer to proof and rise because the gluten network is not as good at retaining gas. It's not as strong. In one study, the final proofing time for a control dough without yudane was 84 minutes, and it increased to 86 minutes with a 20% tangzhong addition. This two-minute increase might not sound like much, but you have to remember, their recipe was much closer to an industrial bread recipe since they used a relatively large amount of yeast, as well as additions of sugar, shortening, and ascorbic acid, all ingredients that can raise the bread volume. They also proofed their dough at a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius with a humidity of 85 percent. So this was a very expedited proofing stage. As home bakers, the timing of our tangzhong doughs could vary greatly depending on the room temperature and recipe. Also, at higher percentages of tangzhong addition, the proofing time definitely extends for longer as well, as we mentioned. The way that you let your tangzhong rest might also influence how long you have to proof the bread dough for as well. Tangzhong rested at room temperature for longer, generally led to longer required proofing times for the final dough compared to the ones put in cold storage. All right, if you've made it this far into the video, you are officially in the advanced category of Tangzhong bakers. Before we go, I want to rapid fire a few unknown benefits of Tangzhong that you can explore further in some of my previous videos. For starters, there's a chance that tangzhong can actually help doughs survive the freezer. Partially preheated doughs improve in frozen quality, allowing you to meal prep basically and store your doughs for much longer. You can check out my dedicated video on frozen doughs for the full breakdown. Next up, and I love doing this, we can use tangzhong to make artisan breads and pizzas with incredibly crisp crusts that refuse to dry out, even in standard home electric ovens. I have a whole video on making incredible pizzas without a specialized pizza oven where I cover the exact science of this. And I also have a video on using tangzhong to make super high hydration ciabattas. It's a lot easier than the regular method. For the third tip, you can use a non-wheat tangzhong to create a wildly crisp crust that survives humid climates. I only recently discovered this myself and it is the only time I will ever recommend that highly diluted one to 5 flour to water ratio because we use it as a glaze. You simply brush the watery mixture onto the crust right before baking. I used this exact method in my xiaobang video to keep the rolls crispier for longer. Finally, if you're feeling adventurous, try making your tangzhong with rice flour or toss in a bit of cooked rice into your bread. Unlike wheat starch, gelatinized rice starch actually does increase bread volume while still improving softness and delaying staling. If you cook rice every day, this could be a very interesting hack or a way to use leftover rice. We do have one chocobong recipe made with rice flour that tastes delicious, and you can check it out here. And that is the true, unfiltered science of tangzhong. Thank you so much for geeking out over bread with me today. Thanks for watching, and bye!