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This Tokyo bakery gives its curry bread a special Aomori ingredient for a one-of-a-kind taste

Casey Baseel Jun 22, 2022
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The pride of Aomori Prefecture is the star of the show at Little Princess Tokyo.

As loyal SoraNews24 readers will know, our ace reporter Mr. Sato is the head of our company’s Craziness Division. But Mr. Sato isn’t just crazy in general, he’s also crazy about bread, as proven by the multiple times he’s gone out to a bakery and come home with a loaf of bread bigger than his head.

Mr. Sato is especially fond of curry bread. A while back he made it his mission to find out which Japanese convenience store has the best curry bread, but that doesn’t mean he’s done taste-testing new varieties whenever he can find them. So when he recently found out about a very unique curry bread creation at bakery Little Princess Tokyo, he hopped on over to the capital’s Koenji neighborhood to try it for himself.

Usually, curry bread is filled with roux and some ground pork or beef, and maybe some of the standard Japanese curry vegetables (potato, carrot, and onion). Little Princess Tokyo, though, uses an ingredient Mr. Sato had never seen in curry bread, but one that makes sense given where the Little Princess bakery chain started out: Aomori Prefecture. Aomori is located at the northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, and among foodies the prefecture is practically synonymous with apples (Japan’s most famous apple variety is called “Fuji” not because of Mt. Fuji, but because the Aomori town of Fujisaki is where they were first grown).

Little Princess Tokyo calls its apple curry bread the yaki ringo kare pan, or baked apple curry bread, and Mr. Sato couldn’t help imagining some kind of hybrid candy apple on a stick/fried curry bread.

However, the “baked” part of “baked apple curry bread” applies to both the apple and the bread, as the bun is baked, not deep-fried.

From the outside, it looks like the baked curry bread you can find at other bakeries, but slice it in half…

…and there are the apples!

Now, while apples in curry bread is a very novel concept, apples are an ingredient in maker House’s Vermont Curry roux blocks, which are sold at supermarkets all over Japan and popular for their mild flavor with subtle sweet notes. Considering how Little Princess Tokyo’s apple curry bread has big chunks of fruit in it, Mr. Sato imagined he was in for an even sweeter sensation as he bit into the bread, but was surprised to find it was immediately spicy, reminding him of the comparatively fiery Java Curry more so than Vermont.

The baked apple curry bread cost 350 yen (US$2.60), which meant Mr. Sato still had enough room in his bread budget to add a small-size loaf of Zusshiri Zeitaku Ringo Shokupan, or “Bread Luxuriously Packed with Apples.”

This is actually Little Princess’ flagship product, with about 1.5 to 2 Aomori-grown Fuji apples’ worth of fruit baked into it plus apple compote.

Even the small-size loaf gave Mr. Sato enough to enjoy the bread two different ways: sliced and soft, or crisply toasted, and both were delicious.

Mr. Sato was actually very lucky to get his hands on the Zusshiri Zeitaku Apple Bread. It sells out extremely quickly, and even if you’re ordering it through the bakery’s online store, it’s not always available, but in a worst-case scenario you can always whip up some rice cooker apple pancakes if you’re stuck making your own apple sweets.

Bakery information
Little Princess Tokyo / リトルプリンセストーキョー
Address: Tokyo-to, Suginami-ku, Koenji Kita 2-10-5
東京都杉並区高円寺北2丁目10-5
Open 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
Closed Wednesdays, Thursdays and other irregular days
Online store

Photos © SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]