The Charm of Bread.

I am Pan-maru!

This time, I would like to talk about the charm of bread.

The reason I became obsessed with bread was because I discovered the charm of 'bread making'.

Bread changes its expression every day depending on the temperature and humidity of the day, the ingredients like flour, and the adjustments made during the process—every environmental factor and step affects it. I was first drawn to the difficulty of baking it with consistent quality every single day.

The temperature when kneading, the adjustments in shaping, the degree of fermentation, and the subtle differences in baking time. Everything affects the final result, and the skill of the artisan who controls all of this is amazing. I simply thought, 'That's so cool.' Haha.

And in bread making, one thing that differs from making sweets is that you can 'cut corners.' This is not meant in a bad way, but rather as a matter of awareness.

If a pastry chef cuts corners while making a cake, they cannot sell it in a shop 100%. No one buys a cake with messy decorations. However, bread can be made with cut corners, for better or worse. To put it positively, even a beginner can make it; to put it negatively, you can make it haphazardly and still sell it in a shop. It is common to see bakeries where bread made somewhat carelessly is lined up on the shelves without issue.

I don't think that is a bad thing. The fact that it can be made even if it is somewhat haphazard means, conversely, that even those without experience can make bread. It is common for inexperienced students or homemakers to work part-time at a bakery, join the production line as an immediate asset, and get better at it. And even then, the bread is baked deliciously, and customers eat it. This is important when running a bakery.

However, even among that, there are many artisans who face bread every day without cutting corners. Artisans who continue to go through trial and error with bread that changes its expression every day. You can truly feel the spirit and love in bread made by an artisan who works on it without cutting any corners at all. You can feel their dedication in everything from the appearance to the taste, aroma, and texture.

Being captivated by that professionalism was one of the triggers for me becoming obsessed with bread!

Bread making is very fun, and I feel infinite possibilities in the depth of how to make it. That is also the charm of bread making.

Because various environments and processes affect the bread, the ways to make bread are infinite. By changing just a little bit, bread truly changes its expression.

Until now, I have always felt the charm of the craftsmanship and professionalism of bread making, and the depth of what bread is.

However, I was recently made aware of a new charm.

There is a phrase that the manager of the cafe where I used to work part-time often said to me.

'Bread is truly a food that makes people happy.'

I felt that this was the customer's perspective, which I thought I understood while being a maker, but didn't actually know.

That bread is a food that can make people smile.

This is just what I have felt, but bread artisans tend to lose sight of their surroundings compared to other artisans. Their passion and concentration on bread are amazing, but they are not very sociable and tend to communicate mostly with other bread artisans.

It is not necessarily because of that, but I had always thought that the charm of bread was the 'fun of making it'.

However, recently I have had the chance to interact with friends outside of the bakery industry and have had opportunities to eat bread with them. While I, as a baker, was eating while paying attention to the texture and aroma, my friends simply said it was "delicious" and ate it silently.

That was when I realized something. Perhaps the charm of bread is not in the umami or depth of fermentation, but in its ability to make people smile.

It felt as though I had remembered the beginner's spirit I had lost while becoming obsessed with the process of making it. It was a moment where I was able to reaffirm the joy of having people eat my bread and hearing them say, "Delicious!" or "Thank you!"

I digressed a little, but this was a story that made me feel proud of a job that can make people smile, and that I want to keep doing my best!

Thank you for reading until the end!