Japanese Food Tips

Although rice is a staple food in Japan, many Japanese also eat bread. In fact, more Japanese may eat bread than rice for breakfast, which is one reason why consumption of rice is decreasing. In order to increase consumption, a research group at Yamagata University in the Tohoku region of northern Japan succeeded in baking bread using only rice flour for the first time in 2001. This use of only rice flour, which does not contain gluten, was a significant breakthrough in bread making. Rice flour bread including gluten is also sold at many large bakeries and convenience stores in Japan. As for home cooking, there are many home bread baking machines able to bake bread using rice flour. There is even one great machine which can cook rice flour bread from just raw white rice plus gluten. Finding the perfect gluten-free bread is still more difficult and expensive, but I hope that in the future consumers will also be able to easily buy gluten-free bread.