It's a plain little oven, but what comes out is both mundane and magical: perfectly toasted bread.
Balmuda, a small appliance maker based in Tokyo's suburbs, has taken an ordinary kitchen appliance—the toaster—and turned it into a high-tech gadget. Using steam and carefully calibrated heat cycles, it transforms store-bought bread into something that smells, tastes and feels like it popped out of a baker's oven.
The toaster costs 24,000 yen ($230), or almost five times the price of a regular device in Japan (the smaller appliances with doors and trays are the norm here, rather than the pop-up variety). With at least a three-month wait in stores, the gadget has become a quiet hit, even though the manufacturer hasn't bought ads or aired any commercials since it debuted in June—an unusual glimmer of innovation in a country that once wooed consumers with Walkmans, digital cameras and flat-panel TVs.
It was at a company picnic on a rainy day, warming bread on a grill, that company founder Gen Terao and his band of product designers accidentally made great toast. After the showers stopped, they tried to reproduce it in a parking lot and realized that water was the key. Thousands of slices later, they figured out that steam traps moisture inside the bread while it's being warmed at a low temperature. The heat is cranked up just at the end, giving it a respectable crust.
"The best results are with croissants," said Mark Oda, who works on web and media content in Tokyo and was among the first to buy Balmuda's toaster. "I can never go back to 5,000-yen toasters."
by Reed Stevenson, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: Akio Kon/Bloomber
Balmuda, a small appliance maker based in Tokyo's suburbs, has taken an ordinary kitchen appliance—the toaster—and turned it into a high-tech gadget. Using steam and carefully calibrated heat cycles, it transforms store-bought bread into something that smells, tastes and feels like it popped out of a baker's oven.
The toaster costs 24,000 yen ($230), or almost five times the price of a regular device in Japan (the smaller appliances with doors and trays are the norm here, rather than the pop-up variety). With at least a three-month wait in stores, the gadget has become a quiet hit, even though the manufacturer hasn't bought ads or aired any commercials since it debuted in June—an unusual glimmer of innovation in a country that once wooed consumers with Walkmans, digital cameras and flat-panel TVs.It was at a company picnic on a rainy day, warming bread on a grill, that company founder Gen Terao and his band of product designers accidentally made great toast. After the showers stopped, they tried to reproduce it in a parking lot and realized that water was the key. Thousands of slices later, they figured out that steam traps moisture inside the bread while it's being warmed at a low temperature. The heat is cranked up just at the end, giving it a respectable crust.
"The best results are with croissants," said Mark Oda, who works on web and media content in Tokyo and was among the first to buy Balmuda's toaster. "I can never go back to 5,000-yen toasters."
by Reed Stevenson, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: Akio Kon/Bloomber
