Breakfast Sandwiches in Omori!
Imagine on your morning commute walking through your town of Omori and you pass by that local German bakery and you smell something more than just freshly baked bread.
Eggs?! Bacon?! Coffee?!
Yes, that’s right the ingredients to a perfect breakfast.
A warm breakfast sandwich for those slow mornings before work, a little pick-me-up before things get started.
I love breakfast, both the process of it as well as the flavor profiles that are available.The smell of freshly ground coffee beans, the sound of water boiling in the kettle, the sizzle of the frying pan with eggs, the feeling of warm bread…
What’s even better is breakfast that is served outside during the chilly hours of the morning while you bathe in the fresh sunlight of the new day ahead of you. At my house in NJ we have a really nice balcony where I used to eat breakfast on all the time.
That’s what I wanted here:
Breakfast sandwiches that you can eat while enjoying the morning hours of the Omori townscape!
Okay, so that was quite a jump, let me explain really quickly how this came to be.
This is Hidaka-san, our town baker at Bäckerei Konditorei Hidaka. He bakes really amazing bread that actually have flavor and fills you up. The bread game in Japan is kinda weak, where instead of a variety of hefty bread they make small fluffy white bread. I mean there is a time and place for both, but if I had to eat bread everyday for breakfast it be the hefty bread.
So one day I was just walking back from lunch and I met Hidaka-san outside of his shop. It was a Wednesday and the bakery was closed so it was by accident that we met. It was a sunny day and we were talking about how nice it would be able to take advantage of the much needed sunlight. Hidaka-san and I would frequently talk about possibly doing a farmer’s market or some sort of food event in the town for a while now.
I think we were specifically talking about the sandwich I made the week before, a Bánh mì made out of boar liver pâté, and Hidaka-san was wondering if I could maybe make something like that again using his bread.
Then it came to me!
flash…!ahhhh…
Been listening to way to much Queen at the office lately…
But it really did come to me, the freshly baked pretzel buns, scrambled eggs, bacon, a tomato salsa, coffee, and the morning sun.
AAAnd that’s how the breakfast sandwich event at Hidaka Breads was decided!
Getting the ingredients
Okay, so some of the ingredients that I got for the sandwiches weren’t locally grown or bought at a supermarket but it was my first time, give me a little slack.
The pretzel buns were already being prepared by Hidaka-san so I was in-charge of getting all the filling.
First stop was Shirahae 白南風, a smoked meat store located in Izumo city, where I went to buy my bacon. Okay small rant on Japanese bacon, or I like to call it ham that is shaped like bacon. If you go to a grocery store, let me tell you there is no smoked bacon just ham that is shaped into a block and called bacon. It’s almost like Canadian Bacon, but less actual meat and more like congealed meat paste. Any “bacon” you buy at a grocery store in Japan will probably not have any actual smoked flavor to it, and won’t turn crispy and won’t have that amazing caramelized fat. So I had to go on a journey to get actually smoked bacon, with real layers of fat and meat.
When you walk into the small house you are immediately greeted by the smell of smoke and a large square fixture made out of bricks. This big ol’ brick block in the center of the room is the smoking room that was made inside of the house. The owner of the store is usually always sitting in front of this block carefully kindling the fire, the heart of this store.
Though real meat is quite expensive in Japan, it makes a big difference when you pay a little bit more to get quality ingredients. I knew the saltiness, smokiness and fat was needed in this sandwich to add depth to all the flavors in the ingredients I was going to use.
The next important ingredient was the miso. I needed something that would add to the umami of the eggs instead of overpower them with its flavors. I actually already had the perfect miso for the job, and it was the miso from AEDAN, the fermented foods store I used to work for back when I was in SF for college. Mariko-san, who is an amazing person for doing this, sent me a bunch of her handmade miso to me, almost like a reverse-import. One of the miso’s that she makes is called Kyoto Sweet Miso, which is a miso that uses rice koji that has a sweet and mellow flavor.
thank you mariko-san!
The last of the special ingredients are the pretzel buns that Hidaka-san makes specially for events. They are a little sweet, chewy, and have the toasty flavors of a good pretzel crust. This bun is super versatile and can stand up to strong flavors or add an extra depth of flavor and volume to a simple sandwich as well.
Just as an aside, it’s really amazing that there is somebody with that skill set here in Omori. Even in such a small town the speed in which Hidaka-san bakes all of these varieties of breads makes daily life here the much better. I think it also helps that he is baking in a small town which does not require a mass production of breads unlike those bread stores you find in those Tokyo train stations. So the combination of both the town and Hidaka-san’s skill set has given birth to Hidaka-san’s amazing bread.
It all started with 80 eggs, 50 buns, and 7 blocks of bacon…
The preparation process started at 10pm the night before the event, slicing bacon, dicing tomatoes and onions, grinding down daikon and slicing buns. I used to work at a deli back in the states, so I knew that having everything pre-sliced and ready to go was going to be key the next morning.
Write here…
Bäckerei Konditorei Hidaka
Closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays
ハ-90-1 Omoricho, Oda, Shimane 694-0305
FB:https://www.facebook.com/bkhidaka/
TEL: 0854-89-0500
My most favorite bakery in the world.When I first came here to Omori to intern at Abeke, my breakfast was here because I had no microwave or anything to quickly make breakfast. I would always go before the bakery opened and get some fresh and hot loaves of bread. Hidaka-san makes really delicious bread that is full of flavor, texture, and local ingredients! Bread tends to run out fast if you come late in the afternoon, so get them early and while their hot!
Smoke House Shirahae
264-3 Taishacho Kitaaraki, Izumo, Shimane 699-0722
TEL: 0853-53-5367
Shirahae is a smoked meat store located in Izumo. From the outside it looks like a regular old house, but there is a distinct smell of smoke that is present in its vicinity. If you bring your own meat they even smoke it for you! When I need a little something special for my breakfast or even soups this is the place I get my bacon. The couple here who runs the business is super sweet as well, so it’s always a pleasure to go!
The next morning at 5:30 am I woke up, obviously running a little late, and I realized that I forgot to get cilantro for the sandwiches… I had to go out in the dark walking through the mud trying to find the cilantro at our company’s garden. Honestly I was a little afraid to run into a male boar and getting gauged by it, something you don’t have to worry about so much in the city I guess.
Even with all of the preparation before the day of the event, the actual process of making the sandwich was quite a hassle. What part in particular you may ask? The cooking 80 eggs worth of scrambled eggs part. Yup. But I had sort of an inkling that this cooking process wouldn’t be so simple and I made sure to have Taku-san, Abeke’s cook, come help me. With amazing speed and precision, Taku-san was able to cook up about 50 eggs worth of scrambled eggs by 7:00 am.
Next came the building process of the sandwiches, and the next wave of helpers came walking into the store. Super glad that so many people were willing to help me on a Thursday morning, even though they all had work in an hour or so.
I think my training at the deli back in NJ came in handy and the sandwich making process was going quite smoothly.
Though most of the orders were for take out from my own company, there were some townspeople who came into the store to sit and have their breakfast sandwiches. I wasn’t really aiming for a full store or a huge line outside of the bakery, but to provide a space where people can take a little breadth before their busy work day starts.
Okay, so a little bit of serious talk here, there isa deeper meaning to why I did this.
As I have lived in this town of Omori, I’ve been wondering what does happiness mean? What makes people feel fulfilled, or in more personal terms, what is going to make me feel fulfilled or accomplished while I live in this town. The answer that I have arrived at is to become part of the culture of the town. Let me explain a little.
A little while ago somebody sent 2 sets of Girl’s Day dolls to Tomi-san (the co-owner of my company) so that Tomi-san could use them as decorations at the two inns that she runs during the Girl’s Day Festival here in Omori. In the letter that Tomi-san received it said this:
I saw your town of Omori-cho in a magazine, and immediately I thought that how nice it would be for these dolls that I have to become part of the townscape of the town…
