Tokyo is a city of superlatives. Most everything, everywhere, is better than anywhere else. I’ve spent enough time there each year eating, shopping and sourcing for Milk Street to be confident in that claim. I pack an extra duffle each trip to stuff with hand-dyed indigo textiles, stainless cooking tools, hand-forged knives, palm-fiber scrub brushes (in all shapes and sizes) and earth-toned ceramics. Not that I’m gluttonous; I just can’t resist handmade, beautifully designed craft.

Get the recipe for Sugared Crème Fraîche Brioche Buns (Galettes Bressane).

Superlatives of course extend to the food. I’d pile on the pounds when in Tokyo if I didn’t walk everywhere (18 miles on one day during last trip!). All the obvious food is terrific—sushi, ramen, tonkatsu, yakitori, konbini sandwiches—but it’s the French-style pastries that really get me. I can’t pass a bakery without buying a big bag of what’s on offer. Each is better than the last—crisp, buttery lamination, on-point flavors that aren’t too sweet or cloying and tender, chewy breads. Japanese bakers beat the French at their own game.

For good reason. The craft of French patisserie fits well within the Japanese concepts of kodawari and kaizen. Kodawari loosely translates as the pursuit of perfection—to work at one thing and do it to the best of your ability. It’s the opposite of dilettantism—and I’d argue, we’d all be better off with a bit more focus on what we do best. Kaizen is the iterative process towards perfection, typically used in business speak. Apply both principles to the craft of French baking and you have the recipe for a very good thing.

So, it makes sense that Joel Robuchon, the Michelin-starred French national treasure, has a handful of French bakeries scattered about Tokyo. The Shinjuku location, in the heart of the fancy shopping district, is a carb-lover’s dream with a bit of Willy Wonka extravagance thrown in. Towering cakes, tessellated rows of sables and macarons, heaped piles of iced buns, craggy nut-studded rolls, slim, ham-and-butter-stuffed ficelle. It’s hard to resist any of it.

However, it’s a simple brioche bun that stole the show on my last visit. Piled on a baking sheet near the counter, still warm from the kitchen, sat squat, golden-brown buns featuring three dollops of pastry cream. Impossibly light, the subtly sweet crumb was perfectly balanced by the creamy, vanilla-scented custard. Simple is very hard to do well, and the bun felt like the bakery showing off its chops.

It turns out the brioche buns are a homey French classic elevated by kodawari. Originally from the Ain region of eastern France (formerly called Bresse), Galette Bressane are typically prepared as large, rustic rounds, either from brioche or laminated croissant dough, glossed with a creamy topping.

Friend, omakase chef and food writer Brendan Liew, who cooked in Tokyo for years, coincidentally loves Galettes Bresanne. So much so that he developed a version for his book Tokyo Local: Cult Recipes from the Streets that Make the City. His take is that the Robuchon version is in part so good because its simplicity highlights the quality of Hokkaido butter and flour (I’ve yet to eat anything from Hokkaido that hasn’t been best in class).

Even without Hokkaido-produced ingredients, they are terrific thanks to Brendan’s simple recipe. He developed what I’d call a “cheater” brioche that takes about 15 minutes to make, far easier than the complicated method typically required for the enriched dough. It’s a largely dump-and-stir process, whereas the butter traditionally is added piece by piece (it takes forever).

What I initially assumed to be a proper pastry cream topping is actually lightly sweetened crème fraîche gently flavored with vanilla and a pinch of sugar. It takes seconds to whisk together. The buns take under two hours start to finish, between bulk ferment and a shaped rise, meaning they could be ready for breakfast if you got up early enough, or more realistically, brunch. I also think they’d work as dessert with a handful of berries or roasted stone fruits.

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Matthew Card

Matthew Card is Milk Street’s Creative Director for Recipes and Products, resident coffee geek, knife collector and equipment junkie. He has 25-plus years of professional cooking, recipe development, food writing and teaching under his belt. When he’s not in the Milk Street kitchen or on the road hunting for new recipes and ideas, Matthew lives with his family in Canberra, Australia, where he does his best to dodge kangaroos on his mountain bike and is learning to love Vegemite.