My name is Manabe, and I am the head of the Production Department and manager of the Food Hub Project .
It has been a month and a half since the grand opening of the restaurant "Kama-ya" and "Kamapan & Store". Thanks to you, we have many customers coming every day. The bread from "Kamapan" is particularly popular, but we have also been asked more and more about why we needed a "bakery" in the food hub.
What is our philosophy as a bakery that promotes "locally produced food"?
What is the role of a bakery in the food hub?
It's not a very appetizing way to talk about it, so it may be a bit strange for the people who make it (lol), but this time I'd like to write about "bread," "local," "economy," and "circulation."
It's a bakery, but it's not just about bread.
The Food Hub Project was born from a working group that was thinking about revitalization strategies for Kamiyama Town. When we thought of the Food Hub as an "operating system" to circulate the economy within the region and connect Kamiyama's agriculture to the next generation, we were thinking about what kind of "applications" we should implement in the Food Hub.
In the Food Hub OS, "Bakery" is one of the core applications.
When looking at a bakery from that perspective, it can be broken down into several elements.
- "A place to sell bread": A device to attract customers in both the everyday and the extraordinary
- "Bread as a Product": A medium that fosters relationships through "sourness"
- "Bread and the Makers": Bread makers and local home-cultured yeast
These three things are implemented in the app.
1. "A place that sells bread": A way to attract customers in both the everyday and the extraordinary
As an agricultural company, our goal through our restaurants is to have people develop a daily awareness of "supporting Kamiyama agriculture by eating." We do not treat people who eat as "consumers," but as "residents" who live together in the town, and we want people of all ages in the local area to understand the idea of "supporting agriculture by eating." And as Food Hub makes a profit through restaurants and processed food development, it circulates the economy within the local area and increases the number of new farmers in Kamiyama.
So why a bakery?
In today's Japan, regardless of whether it's good or bad, I wonder if there are people, young or old, men or women, who don't like bread. I hear that there are events like the XX Bread Festival that attract a lot of people all over the country, and that many people spend hours going out to buy delicious bread.
Until a few years ago, Kamiyama Town had a wonderful bakery called "Makipan" (now closed). Customers from outside the town would line up every morning, and the bread would sell out by mid-morning. I also heard that locals would make reservations and buy bread, or often buy it as a souvenir. (People from Tokushima often give bread as gifts.)
"If I open a bakery again, people will come..."
When I was planning the Food Hub, this wild idea first popped into my head.
It's an undeniable fact...
Anyway, let me think about it further.
"Bread can be eaten by people of all ages (men and women of all ages),
They may come to the store several times a week (high level of regularity)."
"There are no bakeries in town that are open regularly, so money circulates within the community."
In fact, we used to go into the city regularly to buy natural yeast bread.
I think it's a different logic than in urban areas, but considering the nature of a place like Kamiyama, where people go into the city just to buy bread, and people even come from within the city just to buy bread, we thought that by incorporating a bakery into a food hub, it would become a place that local people use on a daily basis (high frequency of visits), and it would also be possible to attract people from a wider area (expand the trade area).In that sense, a bakery in a food hub and in a location like Kamiyama can function as a way to attract customers for both everyday and extraordinary occasions.
However, this wouldn't be possible if we ran an ordinary bakery.
2. "Bread as a product": A medium that fosters relationships through "sourness"
What kind of "bakery" should the Food Hub Project be?
After spending a lot of time talking with head chef Hosoi, we decided to aim to bake "local bread" rather than the kind of bread that we wanted to bake ourselves.
The two bakers aim to make "local bread" by working hard together, cultivating yeast and baking lots of bread every day, starting early in the morning.
Among these, the most central feature is "bread."
Both the agriculture and the restaurant at this food hub are based on rice, but they also place great importance on "bread."
Even though bread is now an indispensable staple food in Japanese households, the current situation is that the white bread sold in supermarkets contains food additives such as emulsifiers and yeast food in order to ensure stable mass production (which is why they are so cheap).
Will the people of the town appreciate the bread that the "maker" has made with sincerity?
Compare it to mass-produced bread.
With this in mind, we have decided to focus on the classic "sliced bread."
At Kamapan, they grow their own home-cultured leavening agent , a mixture of yeast and lactic acid bacteria, and add it to all of their dough. Their sliced bread is made with flour, milk, sugar, raisin liquid (also a leavening agent), home-cultured leavening agent, and salt. They purposely don't add butter to the dough to keep it simple, and although it's delicious just cut into thick slices and baked, you can also enjoy it in a variety of ways by spreading it with butter or seasonal jam.
We would like to convey the characteristics of our bread through its texture, price, and taste.
Texture: Heavy and chewy.
Just by holding Kamapan bread, you can tell that it's "different from ordinary bread."
It's ``heavy.''
Instead of baker's yeast (commonly known as yeast), we use our own cultured leaven and udon flour (medium-strength flour) from Kagawa, so the amount of dough per loaf is very large. As a result, it doesn't rise much and is tightly packed and chewy. (The cost price!)
Shiomi-kun, the former production manager at Levain, a long-established bread maker that uses natural yeast, was in charge of development.
- I could eat it like rice every day.
- And the bread is filling and satisfying.
Thanks to the aforementioned home-cultured fermented starter, the moist texture lasts even after a few days. (Are you craving it now?)
Price: 300 yen (excluding tax)
Usually, a loaf of bread sold at supermarkets costs around 180 yen, and some are even available for under 100 yen. (There is an interesting thread titled "How much would you pay for a loaf of bread?" )
We sell our loaf of bread for 300 yen. We discussed that if we want to position our loaf of bread as the core of what we think of as "local bread," then the price needs to be something that is affordable for everyday use, and we settled on this price.
The ideal way to eat it is to cut one loaf into four "thick" slices and fry them until crispy. Since it is densely packed, I think one slice is enough for adults and half of that for children. Therefore, for a family of four, boiling Tamura eggs (38 yen each) sold at Kamapan will cost about 120 yen per person for breakfast.
Some people may find this expensive, but considering that we use natural ingredients such as natural yeast, are particular about the flour, and the makers bake the bread every morning, I believe this is the bare minimum price that allows us to reproduce the product.
Thanks to that, we have had many elderly people in the area say, "The bread is expensive, but it's delicious," and many of them have come back to buy it again and again. I think we have taken the first step towards making bread for the local community.
Taste: Sometimes sour.
Bread made with natural yeast is usually quite sour, but the makers of Kamapan have taken measures to reduce the sourness while still retaining its goodness. However, because it is made from natural ingredients, the taste can vary depending on seasonal temperature changes. What is usually a slight sourness can sometimes feel too sour today.
This report from the Food Education Officer at Kamapan & Store shares some of the interactions that take place between customers and the store regarding the taste of their bread.
In the evening, I talked with a customer about sour bread.
#Ten different tastes of bread for every person (her unique hashtag)
"Old people are used to eating plain bread, so they say this bread tastes sour (although I can tell). Rumors are scary. I (a bread lover) can tell when I hold it. I can tell when I see it. It's different from other bread. It's obvious at a glance."
After handing over the bread information sheet and talking to them,
"Look, explanations are necessary (rumors are scary). I'll read this and explain it to the elderly!"
Unlike the elderly who just say that sourness is sour, she had an aura of "I understand the goodness of sourness!" and it was fun to talk to her. She left saying, "I'll come back to buy more, I'll come back to buy more bread!"
By the way, this person's husband says that unlike other breads, "this bread is delicious even without adding anything," and eats it as is without butter. For the person who came yesterday and said, "The second-day bread is too sour for me!", I would like to provide you with an explanation of the bread even now.
Conversations like these take place in our stores every day.
The important question here is why we continue to sell this "sliced bread with an unstable taste" as is.
Many mass-produced foods are made using food additives to prevent spoilage and mold even after the expiration date. This is often perceived as "safe and secure" by both manufacturers and consumers.
There are some breads that suck out the moisture in your mouth and are hard to eat unless you have something to drink with them. Breads made with natural yeast, including Kamapan's bread, have a slight sour taste in your mouth and make your mouth water, which allows you to fully enjoy the umami of the wheat when you chew it.
When making bread using natural ingredients such as self-cultured yeast, it is normal for the taste to vary. The maker makes an effort to stabilize the taste, but by repeating the daily dialogue, such as "It's like this today," we believe that through the thing called food, we can rekindle the relationship between "maker" and "eater" that was gradually being lost.
3. "Bread and the Makers": Bread makers and local home-cultured yeast
We have been talking from "1. A place to sell bread" to "2. Bread as a product," but the people who run our restaurant "Kama-ya" and our bakery "Kamapan & Store" are the people who make bread. The same goes for our agricultural team, who are trying to grow over 140 kinds of vegetables in spring and summer.
To jump ahead a bit, the "self-cultured leavening agent" that goes into all of our bread mentioned earlier contains raisins, flour, and other ingredients, as well as lactic acid bacteria and yeast that live in the air of Kamiyama. The ecosystem in which these bacteria coexist is called the "seed," and it can be said to be the essence of Kamiyama's flavor, something that can only be found in Kamiyama.
How can we foster an ecosystem of "makers" who continue to involve the local community in the fermentation of bread, just like with our own cultured yeast? We are currently working on various initiatives.
Seasonal bread connects agriculture and the local community.
One of the popular items at Kamapan & Store is the "seasonal bread."
Until recently, the "sweet potato loaf" was very popular. They knead their own sweet potatoes into the bread dough and bake it in a loaf shape (rectangular). The sweetness of the sweet potato and the umami of the wheat mix well together, making it delicious. However, they recently ran out of their own sweet potatoes, so they were thinking about what to knead in next, but when they tried using carrots, they found that they didn't go well with the dough and there was too much moisture, so the dough became soggy and didn't turn out well...
When he was trying and failing, he consulted with a local farmer, who told him that they had mugwort in season. He was even kind enough to boil it and chop it finely before delivering it to him, knowing that it would be hard for the store to keep it. This created a happy cycle in which the farmers would come to buy the bread they had made. It was through these interactions that the "Mugwort Loaf" was born.
It looks delicious when spread with bean paste. We are also talking about making a paste using the bean paste from bean buns.
They also offer bread made with rice flour baguette dough and kneaded with seasonal leafy vegetables. The bread changes with the seasons, from "spinach bread" to "mibuna bread," and currently they are selling "watercress bread."
Furthermore, we are also planning to develop a bread that will expand on the "seasonal bread" and incorporate spring and summer leafy vegetables grown by high school students in cooperation with the Josai High School branch, an agricultural high school in Kamiyama Town.
Unlike cooked or processed foods, bread itself has the packaging power and lightness of a product. It is only thanks to the open, flexible, and highly skilled bread makers that we are able to rapidly get agriculture and the local community involved, which I think is a testament to the skill of the bread and the bread makers.
Kamiyama Campagne Project (tentative name)
Making local bread using the Kamiyama wheat we all grew together?!
Food Hub Agriculture Chief Hakuto's family has a variety of seeds that have been handed down for over 70 years.
Mochi rice, soybeans, red beans, wheat, and many more.
The "mochi rice" will be used in a nutrition education class with "local elementary school students" where they will plant rice, remove the weeds, eat the mochi, and collect the seeds to recycle the produce. "Soybeans" will soon be planted and they plan to make tofu together with "a tofu shop in a neighboring village". "Azuki beans" are planned to be planted in the future so that they can be used for the bean paste filling of Kamapan's popular bean-jam buns, which are cooked by a "local Japanese confectionery shop". There is still a lot to be done, but they are working with local producers on everything from growing the crops to having the locals eat them.
Among them, since around October last year, we have been experimentally planting several varieties of wheat, including seeds that have been handed down in Kamiyama. As expected, the seeds that have been handed down in the region are strong, and even though they were planted at the same time, in the same field, and under the same conditions, the growth rates are completely different.
On the right is the wheat that has been handed down in Kamiyama, and on the left is a different variety of wheat.
Shiomi-kun, who is in charge of product development at Kamapan, is also experimenting with making bread using this wheat. (I was informed that he was able to bake something similar to bread at that time lol)
The current bread lineup is centered around so-called "soft" breads that have a good bite, but as makers, they are extremely particular about the bread made with this inherited wheat, and they are talking about making a hard campagne that goes well with wine and meals.
The blue-capped plastic bottle contains wheat that has been passed down in Kamiyama. They mill it experimentally, and when they mix it with other flours as whole wheat and bake it, "you can bake something like bread," says Shiomi, who is in charge of menu development.
Furthermore, how can we get the local community involved and turn everyone into "creators" (currently underway).
His home field. He grows wheat, a traditional crop from Kamiyama (foreground).
This is getting long, but just one more thing.
I was given some wheat seeds that have been passed down in Kamiyama, and since last fall I have been growing wheat in my own field.
At that time, I just wanted to try growing them,
It might be interesting to bring the wheat we grow back to the food hub and have it made into bread.
I can't just be a consumer, I can also be a producer.
I thought this later.
In Kamiyama, many homes come with farmland, and many people have vacant fields. Wheat is relatively easy to grow among agricultural crops. However, it is quite a lot of work to harvest, dry, thresh, mill, and make it edible. So, we are discussing that if we could distribute seeds to everyone and have them grow wheat, and the food hub could mechanize the harvesting and drying stages to some extent, more people could become "makers" and get involved in making "local bread."
I don't know yet whether I'll be able to harvest the wheat that's been growing on its own in my home field, which I've been leaving almost unattended since October. There are many issues to be addressed, such as the actual purchase price of wheat, the possibility of reproduction, and whether this wheat can really be used to bake delicious country bread. However, I hope we can all discuss and move forward together so that more people can become "makers" in Kamiyama and participate in local bread making.
lastly.
To be honest, we didn't start the bakery with a detailed plan. It just happened as it happened. But what we decided from the beginning was that the "makers" - chefs, bakers, and farmers - would play a central role in building relationships with the local community and circulating the activities of the food hub.
"Bread," "region," "economy," and "circulation."
So why not become one of the "makers" and become a part of Kamiyama's flavor?