Reviewed by: Takahiro Sugiyama (CEO, meguri Inc.)
Matcha bread and matcha croissants are easy additions to the morning shelf for bakeries and cafés that already serve matcha lattes. But bread rises with yeast, so it is fair to ask how much matcha to use and whether it affects fermentation. We compare the matcha amounts in official recipes, then look at the effect on rise, croissant lamination, colour, shelf life and matcha cost per piece.
Types of matcha bread, and where the matcha goes
How you make matcha bread depends on where the matcha goes. It can be mixed through the whole dough, added to only part of the dough, or put in the cookie crust on top.
Where the matcha goes, by type of bread
| Type | Where the matcha goes | Example from an official recipe |
|---|---|---|
| Milk bread and rolls | The whole dough, or half of it (marbled) | King Arthur Baking (a US flour company) mixes matcha into only half the dough of its marbled milk bread |
| Anpan (buns filled with sweet bean paste) and bagels | The whole dough. Some recipes also put it in the bean paste | Recipes from the appliance makers Toshiba and Hitachi mix matcha with the bread flour |
| Melon pan (a bun with a cookie crust) | Both the bread dough and the cookie crust on top | The Kobe Women’s Junior College report puts matcha in both |
| Croissants | The dough before lamination (the détrempe, the dough that wraps the butter) | Debic and Mizuba Tea do not put it in the butter |
Adding matcha to croissants after baking
English-language recipe sites also fill baked croissants with matcha almond cream and bake them again, or coat them with matcha white chocolate. The matcha amounts for those creams and chocolate are compared in Matcha for baking.
Matcha amounts in official recipes
In official recipes that give matcha in grams, matcha was about 1–3% of the flour. We calculated each percentage by dividing the weight of matcha by the weight of bread flour (or all-purpose flour).
Matcha as a share of flour
| Source | Bread | Matcha | Flour | Matcha to flour | Baking | Pieces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toshiba (Ishigama Dome oven) | Matcha anpan | 2.5g | 250g bread flour | 1% | Preheat to 210°C, bake at 200°C for 7–12 min | 12 |
| Toshiba (Ishigama Dome oven) | Matcha and chestnut-bean bagels | 5g | 250g bread flour | 2% | Steam, then 190°C for 13–20 min | 4 |
| Hitachi (IH cooking heater) | Anpan (matcha dough) | 5g | 230g bread flour | about 2.2% | Automatic grill menu | 8 |
| Debic (a professional butter and cream brand) | Matcha croissant dough (Pain au matcha) | 20g | 850g bread flour | about 2.4% | Proof 1 h 30 min at 28°C, bake at 170°C for 17 min | 40 |
| King Arthur Baking | Marbled milk bread | 12g | 480g all-purpose flour (including 60g in the tangzhong) | 2.5% | 350°F (about 177°C) for 40–45 min | 1 loaf |
| Kobe Women’s Junior College report | Matcha bread, matcha melon pan | 3% of flour | Per 100 of wheat flour | 3% | 180°C for 15 min | Not stated |
| Toshiba (Ishigama Dome oven) | Quick bread (matcha) | 5g | 160g bread flour | about 3.1% | First rise in the microwave, bake in the oven | 8 |
| Mizuba Tea (a matcha seller) | Matcha croissants | 3 tbsp | 3.5–4 cups all-purpose flour | By volume | 350°F (about 177°C) for 12–15 min | 32 |
Because King Arthur Baking puts matcha into only half the dough, the matcha is about 5% of the flour on the matcha side (our own calculation).
Source: Debic, “Pain au matcha” https://www.debic.com/en/recipes/pain-au-matcha
Lower than cakes, overlapping with cookies
Compared in the same way, Taiwanese castella, roll cake and cupcakes used about 7–17% matcha to flour (Matcha for baking), and cookies about 2.7–12.5% (Matcha cookies for cafés). The 1–3% in bread is lower than in cakes and overlaps with the low end for cookies. In your shop, bake two or three amounts from the range in the table and decide by colour and bitterness.
Mix the matcha with the flour first
For its matcha anpan, Toshiba mixes the matcha into the bread flour and sifts them together. Hitachi shakes the dry ingredients together in a bag before adding liquid. Both mix the matcha with the flour before any liquid goes in.
Does matcha affect fermentation and rise?
One report found that dough with matcha at 3% of the flour rose no differently. On the other hand, we did not find any study that directly measured how tea compounds act on yeast inside bread dough.
No effect on rise at 3%
A 2012 report from Kobe Women’s Junior College baked bread with powdered matcha and hojicha from Wazuka in Kyoto Prefecture, added at 0, 1, 3 and 5% of the wheat flour. Dough with 3% added showed no effect on baking performance, including how much the dough expanded, and the tea flavour after baking was rated well. For bread, bean paste and cookies alike, 3% was preferred, and the report concludes that 3% is a suitable amount of powdered tea.
| What the report (page 58) says | |
|---|---|
| Dough with powdered tea (matcha or hojicha) at 3% of the wheat flour | No effect on baking performance, including how much the dough expanded |
| Taste panel | The tea flavour was not lost after baking, and overall preference was rated as tasty |
| Figure 4 | Melon pan with nothing added (left) and with 3% matcha (right) |
Source: Kazuko Hosomi, “京都府和束町における茶葉の生産とその利用について” (Production and use of tea leaves in Wazuka, Kyoto Prefecture, in Japanese), Kobe Women’s Junior College Ronko vol. 57 (2012) https://www.yg.kobe-wu.ac.jp/jc/research/ronkou/pdf/57/vol57_05.pdf
This is a report on a small trial tasted by eight students and one teacher, and it gives no figures for rise. It also does not say how the dough rose with 1% or 5%.
Finer matcha gave better rise
A 2003 paper in the Journal of the Japanese Society for Food Science and Technology by researchers at Ito En’s Central Research Institute made matcha with a finer particle size for processed foods. According to the abstract, regular matcha had a mean particle size of 11.5µm (micrometres, thousandths of a millimetre), and the finer matcha 3.2µm. The finer matcha settled more slowly in water, gave better bread rise than regular matcha, and gave better colour in soba noodles. The comparison is between matchas of different particle sizes, not against bread with no matcha. We were only able to check the abstract, not the recipes or figures in the full paper.
What we could not confirm
We did not find any study that directly measured, inside bread dough, whether green tea catechins (the compounds behind its astringency) weaken baker’s yeast. When you increase the matcha, compare the rise against dough with no matcha, side by side, over the same fermentation time.
Laminating matcha croissants
In official recipes, matcha went into the dough, not the butter, and the dough and butter were chilled while they were folded. With the matcha dough on the outside, green layers show after baking.
Debic’s method (professional)
- Knead a matcha dough and a plain dough separately to the same recipe (only the matcha dough gets the 20g of matcha)
- Knead for 18–20 minutes, to a dough temperature of 22–24°C
- Roll out to 30 × 40 cm, freeze to 2°C, then rest in a refrigerator at 3°C or below until the next day
- Put the matcha dough on top of the butter and the plain dough underneath, then give one double fold and one single fold, with the matcha side facing out
- Rest 30 minutes in the freezer and 30 minutes in the refrigerator, shape, proof 1 h 30 min at 28°C, then bake at 170°C for 17 minutes
Mizuba Tea’s method (home)
Mizuba Tea, a matcha seller, puts the matcha into the dough (the détrempe), not the butter. The butter is wrapped slightly colder than room temperature, stiff but not hard, and the dough gets 4 turns, chilled for 30 minutes after each. Mizuba says the matcha turns the dough leaf green and makes the croissants taste more savoury. Neither recipe mixes matcha into the butter, and both take time to chill so that the dough and butter stay at a similar firmness.
Crust colour and the green inside
Official recipes bake at 170–200°C (Toshiba’s anpan preheats to 210°C), and the outside browns. For bread where you want the green to show, decide where the matcha dough goes and how far to bake.
Doneness guides in the recipes
King Arthur Baking bakes its loaf until the crust is golden brown and the centre reaches at least 190°F (about 88°C). Debic bakes at 170°C for 17 minutes, and the Kobe Women’s Junior College report at 180°C for 15 minutes. Why heat dulls the green is explained in Matcha for baking.
Showing the green
Debic’s Pain au matcha is folded with the matcha dough on the outside, so green layers show on the surface and in the cross-section. Combining matcha dough and plain dough, as in marbled milk bread or matcha melon pan, makes the green parts stand out. King Arthur Baking writes that the more expensive ceremonial-grade matcha (a grade sold for drinking) gives a more vibrant green (that sentence on the page says “cookies”). Grade names have no official standard, so check what you are comparing in Matcha grades.
Shelf life, storage and allergens
Store bread at room temperature. Putting it in the refrigerator makes it go stale faster. Freeze it if you need to keep it for more than a few days.
Guides from a trade body and a flour company
| Source | Storage |
|---|---|
| Federation of Bakers (UK bakery trade body) | Store at room temperature (ideally 17°C). About 5°C, the average temperature of most home refrigerators, is the temperature at which bread stales most quickly. Wrapped bread keeps in the freezer for up to three months. Crusty bread is best eaten on the day of purchase |
| King Arthur Baking (marbled milk bread) | Well wrapped at room temperature for up to 5 days. Freeze for longer storage |
The Federation of Bakers says that in very hot weather bread can be refrigerated to delay mould, although this speeds up staling. Both are guides for home use, so set the date for bread you sell after storing it in your own recipe and packaging and checking texture and colour. Storage of the matcha powder itself is covered in Matcha shelf life.
Selling bread in bags
Matcha bread often contains wheat, milk (butter, milk) and egg (in the dough or egg wash), and an almond cream filling adds tree nuts. A matcha mix with milk powder adds milk. The allergen lists in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, and when labels are needed, are covered in Matcha cookies for cafés.
Matcha cost per piece
The matcha cost of one piece is “price per kg ÷ 1,000 × grams of matcha in one piece”. To find the grams in one piece, divide the matcha in one batch by the number of pieces.
Matcha in one piece
With the amounts in the official recipes, it works out as follows (our own calculations). To get the matcha cost per piece, multiply the grams per piece below by “your price per kg ÷ 1,000”.
| Source | Matcha per batch | Pieces | Matcha per piece |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toshiba matcha anpan | 2.5g | 12 | about 0.21g |
| Debic matcha croissant (dough only) | 20g | 40 | 0.5g |
| Hitachi anpan | 5g | 8 | about 0.63g |
| Toshiba matcha and chestnut-bean bagels | 5g | 4 | 1.25g |
| King Arthur Baking marbled milk bread | 12g | 1 loaf | 12g |
For small buns, the matcha in one latte (3g in Ippodo Tea’s recipe) bakes more than 10 anpan. Debic’s Pain au matcha also uses 20g of matcha in its matcha ganache filling, so add that to the calculation.
What else goes into the cost
Besides matcha, include flour, butter, eggs, dairy, bags and labels, and pieces lost to baking errors or left unsold. How the price of matcha is set is covered in Matcha prices.
Choosing matcha for bread
Whether to use the same matcha as your lattes or a separate one is best decided by test-baking with your own recipe. Each piece uses little matcha, so changing the grade makes only a small difference to the cost of one piece.
What to check
- Whether the ingredients are 100% matcha. A matcha mix with sugar or milk powder gives too little matcha at the recipe amount (how to tell is in What is pure matcha?)
- Particle size. There is a report that finer matcha gave better bread rise
- Whether you can keep buying the same specification. A new lot can change the baked colour
How to test-bake
- Bake each candidate matcha in your own recipe with the same amount of matcha, and compare the rise against dough with no matcha over the same fermentation time
- Photograph the outside and the cross-section under the same light, just after baking and the next day
- Taste for the balance of bitterness and sweetness, and decide together with the matcha cost per piece and the selling price
Omakase Matcha supplies matcha from Uji, Yame, Shizuoka, Kagoshima and Miyazaki. Orders start from 1kg, and you can request up to three samples. Request matcha for test-baking from Samples, and see how the regions differ in Origins.
Sources
- King Arthur Baking, “Marbled Matcha Milk Bread” https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/marbled-matcha-milk-bread-recipe
- Debic, “Pain au matcha” https://www.debic.com/en/recipes/pain-au-matcha
- Mizuba Tea, “Mizuba Matcha Croissants” https://mizubatea.com/blogs/recipes/mizuba-matcha-croissants
- Toshiba Lifestyle, Ishigama Dome original recipe “抹茶あんパン” (Matcha anpan, in Japanese) https://www.toshiba-lifestyle.com/jp/microwaves/recipes/detail/818
- Toshiba Lifestyle, Ishigama Dome original recipe “お手軽パン 抹茶” (Quick bread, matcha, in Japanese) https://www.toshiba-lifestyle.com/jp/microwaves/recipes/detail/1363
- Toshiba Lifestyle, Ishigama Dome original recipe “抹茶と栗あんベーグル” (Matcha and chestnut-bean bagels, in Japanese) https://www.toshiba-lifestyle.com/jp/microwaves/recipes/detail/607
- Hitachi, IH cooking heater recipe “あんパン” (Anpan, in Japanese) https://kadenfan.hitachi.co.jp/ih/recipe/m/all/o141.html
- Kazuko Hosomi, “京都府和束町における茶葉の生産とその利用について” (Production and use of tea leaves in Wazuka, Kyoto Prefecture, in Japanese), Kobe Women’s Junior College Ronko vol. 57 (2012) https://www.yg.kobe-wu.ac.jp/jc/research/ronkou/pdf/57/vol57_05.pdf
- Haraguchi, Imada, Sawamura, “Production and characterization of fine matcha for processed food”, Journal of the Japanese Society for Food Science and Technology 50(10) 468-473 (2003), abstract on AGRIS https://agris.fao.org/search/en/records/647242e92c1d629bc9792fac
- Federation of Bakers, “Consumer Factsheet No.18 Keeping Bread Fresh” https://www.fob.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FS-18-Keeping-Bread-Fresh.pdf
- Ippodo Tea, “抹茶ラテ” (Matcha latte, in Japanese) https://www.ippodo-tea.co.jp/blogs/tea-recipe/19%E6%8A%B9%E8%8C%B6%E3%83%A9%E3%83%86
