I thought I was going to see God in this taste

March 1, 2023 6:05 PM

40 minutes of hand-kneaded wood-fired bread baking in rural Kyoto

The baker is Mitsuki Ota, at Farmhouse Bread Yasakagama; the title is from this this article.

posted by We had a deal, Kyle (19 comments total)

Everything about this is beautiful.
posted by Oyéah at 6:24 PM on March 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Baking sourdough bread by wood fire is special. My winter technique involves a dutch oven placed in the wood stove. Just the right amount of hot coals have to reach the perfect temperature, and the dutch oven goes in between them and then all temperature control is out of my hands and it either works or it doesn't. Mostly it does, beautifully. Baked my last of the season today.
posted by joeyh at 7:11 PM on March 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

Those big dough loaves look so chill.
posted by ignignokt at 8:07 PM on March 1, 2023

I don't bake bread in loaf pans so I was a bit surprised that he didn't shape the dough before putting it in, but I guess the point of the loaf pan is that the shaping isn't necessary.

I'd love to visit this place but it's a bit far to go just for a loaf of bread.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 8:15 PM on March 1, 2023

More careers my stupid guidance counsellor never told me about.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:31 PM on March 1, 2023 [18 favorites]

So curious about the business model of this place. That was a lot of loaves of bread for such a small community. But they seemed to sell out pretty well. I suppose there's a lot of deliveries to make, as the man's wife seemed to be doing at the end. It said two days, so he makes this big batch every two (or three) days?
posted by zardoz at 9:29 PM on March 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Kyotango, eh

might have to take a road trip one of these weekends
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:49 PM on March 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Kneading the wood by hand may seem like overkill but it’s the only way to work out the knots.
posted by No-sword at 11:49 PM on March 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

That oven is deep. Does anyone know about that "segur et li" loaf, the brown rice and rice flour one? I'd really like to give that one a try but I'm not finding anything under that name when I look for descriptions.

Anyway, this convinced me to walk to the bakery on my lunch break and to have a couple thick slabs of sourdough toast for lunch. Brilliant way to get the day started, thanks for sharing the video.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 1:56 AM on March 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

might have to take a road trip one of these weekends

It looks like it's right by Amanohashidate so that's one other thing you could see on the trip.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:14 AM on March 2, 2023

Is there a name for this genre of food video? Long, slow meditative recording of someone making food in bulk quantities. No narration, seldom people's faces, just video documentation of hands and machines at work.

There's a lot of videos like this on Youtube. My favorite late night thing are Asian street food, random example here. I've wondered if there's a general term for them. And some sort of blog / review to help me find the best ones.
posted by Nelson at 6:51 AM on March 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

It said two days, so he makes this big batch every two (or three) days?

I think it's following one batch from beginning to end; rather than showing one work day which would probably be "bake off yesterday's dough and then prep tomorrow's dough".

Nelson, I too have fallen down the rabbit-hole of Japanese and Korean food-prep videos and yeah, there's definitely a common format to them but I'm not sure what to call it. ASMR yes; they lean into the no-narration / ambient-sound thing strongly, but that feels like too broad a category.

(Japanese travel vloggers also seem to have broadly adopted the no-narration-occasional-captions format; we're fond of travelgeek.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:54 AM on March 2, 2023

Count me in as a fellow traveller on the Japanese and Korean food-prep video bandwagon. I found Udonsobaosakanara here on the blue, in cased anyone missed it. Don't be put off by the jerky fast-cut editing style of the intro, that's decidedly not how the remainder of each video is put together.

I'm definitely watching the video from the post later today!
posted by mollweide at 9:55 AM on March 2, 2023

Their website says they bake every other Friday and every Saturday. My rough idea of their schedule is something like: Monday -- chop wood. Tuesday -- mill flour. Wednesday -- mix dough. Thurday -- shape loaves, mix second batch of dough. Friday -- bake, shape second batch of loaves. Saturday: bake and sell.
posted by joeyh at 5:29 PM on March 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

More careers my stupid guidance counsellor never told me about.

Bakeries and bread shops in Japan have had a real boom over the last five years or so. Lots of mom and pop bakeries all over Tokyo for sure. I heard that it's a popular business because the overhead to start is relatively cheap and the customer base is already there.
posted by zardoz at 3:40 AM on March 3, 2023

Count me in as a fellow traveller on the Japanese and Korean food-prep video bandwagon.

Tina was posting some of these a few years ago.
posted by Rash at 11:05 AM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't bake bread in loaf pans so I was a bit surprised that he didn't shape the dough before putting it in, but I guess the point of the loaf pan is that the shaping isn't necessary.

I've been baking sourdough every 2 or 3 days for about 4 years now and I'm pretty lazy and have realized that about 70% of what the sourdough foodies show is really unnecessary performativity in pursuit of quite marginal gains.

Also the pursuit of reddit-praise worthy big airy crumbs is pointless if you want to actually use the bread for anything because it just means the bread is going to leak whatever you put on it.
posted by srboisvert at 7:58 AM on March 5, 2023

If you like such sights, perhaps you would enjoy the film Bread of Happiness.
posted by jellacious at 6:59 AM on March 21, 2023

I don't bake bread in loaf pans so I was a bit surprised that he didn't shape the dough before putting it in, but I guess the point of the loaf pan is that the shaping isn't necessary.

I've been baking sourdough every 2 or 3 days for about 4 years now and I'm pretty lazy and have realized that about 70% of what the sourdough foodies show is really unnecessary performativity in pursuit of quite marginal gains.

I started off baking no-knead bread and it wasn't until I saw some of those sourdough foody videos that I learned about shaping the dough. It takes very little time, effort, or skill, and the resulting bread is much more symmetrical which is nice for making sandwiches.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:30 PM on March 21, 2023