Bread Mania

Pure white bread is the only thing you can buy at usual supermarkets in Japan -- it is plastered with slogans to draw the consumer in... "Soft!" "Sweet!". It's the complete opposite of the dense, whole grain types we love... Even specialty bakeries feature mostly snow-white varieties, with the only real variations being the occasional loaf of rye, or white bread mixed with a tiny bit of brown rice flour.

We thought we had the problem licked many years ago when Costco opened and featured "rustic bread" in its bakery -- bread with actual whole wheat content! Yahoo! Phil kept the freezer stocked with it and we used it for sandwiches, toast, etc. I have had a bread maker for several years and often use it to make pizza dough, focaccia dough, and the occasional loaf of sandwich bread to supplement the Costco fare, and so we carried on. Until several months ago, that is, when Costco stopped making the only bread we could get our hands on that had a modicum of whole wheat flour in it.

So I upped my bread-making output to fill the gap. That has worked all right EXCEPT that I am limited to the capacity of the bread maker's pan -- i.e. ONE LOAF at a time. Now you purists might say -- "Hey Christie, what's the matter with your arms?! Put your back into it, girl, and do it by hand!". That's a nice idea, but I don't think we'd have bread nearly as often as we do if I had to do it by hand all the time!! So we have been rationing ourselves with the one occasional loaf I manage to get baked every now and then. Now, one loaf doesn't go very far in this bread-loving family -- we can decimate 2/3 of one in a single breakfast or lunch sitting!

So I have been eyeing those super-duper mixers with dough hooks for quite a while. Finally, one came up for sale at dear old Costco, a DeLonghi brand jobbie -- vintage style, bright red, with a manual promising all sorts of fantastic operational feats. So we forked over the cash and I excitedly mixed up a double batch of our favorite oatmeal/honey/whole wheat bread. Well, I guess I had pretty high expectations of the DeLonghi machine, which labored under the weight of the 2-loaf batch. When things got too intense, I shut the thing off, witnessing as I did a gentle puff of smoke escaping from the motor vents!!

Frustrated, I called our friends Roland and Rebecca in Kobe, because I knew that Roland made heavy duty German rye bread in his KitchenAid mixer all the time, and I had never heard him complain of smoke or any other irregularity in his machine. He confirmed my suspicion that I had bought a wimpy machine, so I packed it back up, took it back to Costco, and got my money back.

Fast forward a month or two and you would find me unboxing my newly acquired KitchenAid mixer!! It looks suspiciously like the "Artisan" model that Roland had demonstrated for me in his Kobe kitchen. (In fact, it is the very same machine -- R&R are departing Japan for the U.S., so I happily bought their mixer to lighten their load of things to ship home! ... I think they were just being sympathetic to my plight...)

Well, this weekend was bread making weekend, and I have had a blast! Yesterday 2 lovely loaves of the very same oatmeal/honey/whole wheat variety that toasted (pun intended) the DeLonghi machine, and today a fantastic batch loaf of bulgur wheat bread (bulgur wheat compliments of R&R) and my first shot at rye -- a dense but yummy-looking loaf of rye (rye flour compliments of R&R)

Photos of my efforts, already taste-tested and pronounced DELICIOUS! by the family and Mrs. Kusuhara next door: The bulgur loaf fresh out of the oven (link to the recipe here)
Here's the bulgur loaf cut in 1/2 with the rye loaf off to the right.
This venture meshes very nicely with my new frame of mind, which has evolved as I have read and contemplated Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the latter of which is about DIY food and eating locally. (Never mind that I have to acquire such exotic ingredients as whole wheat flour and bulgur wheat by loading up my suitcases with them every time I visit Canada or buying them from an import company... I am still trying to find a local supplier...) If anyone out there knows of somebody who makes ww flour in Jpn, please let me know!