A yen for dough like mom made

Photo courtesy of CBS

A yen for dough like mom made

Many high-energy physics laboratories have athletic clubs, music clubs, or chess clubs, but a bread-tasting club? Only in Japan. And only at Koo Energy Ken, KEK, outside of Tsukuba.

Bread Tasters of Tsukuba, or BRETT, formed in late 2005 in response to some foreign scientists' distaste for Japanese bread.

“It tastes like five-day-old Wonder Bread,” says Tokio Ohska, referring to the soft, white sandwich bread that took on an iconic status in the United States as far back as the 1930s.

To be fair, bread is not a staple of the Japanese diet. What Europeans and Americans would eat with bread, the Japanese eat with rice.

Still, food reminds people of the comforts of home, and some foreign scientists and their families were getting a little homesick, not to mention hungry. That presented a problem for Ohska, who as head of the KEK research services office is charged with making foreign scientists feel comfortable at the lab.

Nearby bakeries initially turned down requests to make Western-style bread, citing a lack of imported flour and yeast as well as a lack of demand from Asian customers. So scientists took things into their own hands—literally.

One French scientist started importing ingredients and making his own bread. Ohska tried a different tack. He gathered 15 KEK members, mostly physicists from Europe, America, and Brazil, and started BRETT.

Although members have not met recently, at their most active the bread tasters gathered roughly twice a year to sample 30 breads from area bakeries. They sniffed, pinched, and eyed the doughy specimens as if they were the finest glasses of wine. Each piece was rated on its texture, taste, crust, interior, and fragrance.

To keep their palates untainted by foreign flavors, eaters could consume only water, plain tea, olive oil, and unsalted butter with the breads. “Nothing else is provided to the judges, who have to eat through some 30 baguettes,” Ohska says. “It is a kind of torture, but they endure it faithfully.”

Five Japanese newspapers have run articles on the bread club and published the results of tastings. “This made the bakeries in this town sort of worried,” Ohska says. “Now, one of the bakeries is bringing its bread especially in to KEK. It is sold in the restaurant and at the grocery store on site.”

And so Ohska's food dreams came true: Taste it, and they will come.

Tona Kunz