Unique products winning popularity
One of the pleasures of traveling is to encounter delicious food from all over Japan. The ”Bruggeprius” that we visited in Iwate produce and sell bread as well as cake, custard pudding and chocolate. The main store is in Hanamaki city in Iwate Prefecture, and there are also branches in Tsushida, Kaminohashi, and Kawatoku in Morioka city which are very popular amongst the locals.
One of their flagship product ”Baumkuchen” has a great reputation. They have made different varieties and they call themselves the ”Baumkuchen Studio”.
”English Coastline Hard Baum” is a Baumkuchen where the outside is crunchy and the inside is fluffy with amazing harmony. The secret of this deliciousness is the rice powder ”Rikuba 132” which is a rare variety that is cultivated by a contracted farmer in Nitoshi in Iwate Prefecture and local eggs. The other one; ”Soft Baum” features a rich and moist taste. They use different ingredients to create Baumkuchen with different characteristics.
Surprised by the ingredients from Iwate
Dai Takahashi is the current the owner-chef who trained in Tokyo and took over the family business of the confectionary store. When he returned to his hometown, he was surprised about the varieties of delicious ingredients.
”In Iwate, there are many artisanal producers who produce on a small scale. Cream made by the milk from a cow raised in Takayama area in Okunakayama in northern Iwate is rich in fat content and delicious but not too heavy. Now I use it for all products from ”Cream Anpan” (cream and bean paste bread), cake and custard pudding.”
The product you can truly enjoy the cream is ”Iwate Marugoto Cream Anpan”. Even though the flour produced in Japan is decreasing in production, they use flour from Iwate for their bread dough, ”azuki” beans from Iwate, whipped cream that we mentioned earlier made by Takahashi, and so the Cream Anpan is completely filled with ingredients from Iwate. Also, they add the whipped cream after it’s ordered, so you can truly enjoy the freshness.
”A Luxury” in the day to day life
Takahashi says ”By using all the ingredients from Iwate, it is such a luxury to make bread and cake using fresh and safe ingredients not to mention the obvious deliciousness.”
True to the words, the biggest charm of Bruggeprius is that you can see the faces of all the people from the producer of ingredients to people involved in making bread and sweets.
”The producers are working hard by taking very little account of the profit. We want those producers to make ingredients that no one else can make. And we want to develop more new products.” There are many varieties of bread and sweets that we cannot introduce here, but they are all the flagship items that Takahashi and the producers work hard on. They are ”flavors of Iwate” that you should visit when you come to Iwate.
