The Bread a Sick Child Said, "I Can Eat This Bread"

A few minutes by bus from Tsutsujigaoka Station on the Keio Line, heading towards Jindaiji, brings you to a quiet residential neighborhood directly behind Kaminohara Elementary School in Chofu City. Here stands a stylish house with a green door and a long approach, reminiscent of a small French restaurant. This is Erizo, a bakery that uses 100% natural yeast, opened in April 2007 by Eri Abe, who renovated her family home to create the shop.

Abe, who worked as an office lady until she was 29, has always loved delicious food. Her grandparents also baked bread at home, and she herself enjoyed baking. Since there were no bakeries nearby, she gradually began baking bread for acquaintances in the neighborhood. After training at other bakeries and with the encouragement of those around her, she finally opened her own shop.



Erizo's bread is made with 100% natural yeast. The bread has a rich wheat flavor, is fluffy, and has no peculiar aftertaste. The wheat used is primarily a blend of Haruyutaka, a domestic variety from Ebetsu, Hokkaido. For sweetness, they use beet sugar, rich in minerals, and for salt, they use Shimamasu, a natural salt from Okinawa. They carefully select ingredients that are as gentle on the body as possible and that they are confident in.

Their popular "Iyokan" bread uses Iyokan peel from Shikoku, finished with raw sugar. The slight bitterness of the Iyokan peel makes it a refreshing treat. The custard cream is made fresh every morning using only egg yolks, and the chocolate cream is homemade using high-quality chocolate from the Belgian company Callebaut. "They're expensive, but if I'm going to make them, they have to be delicious!" Abe says with a smile.

Since the bread dough does not contain eggs or milk, many of Erizo's customers are children with allergies.



There's a reason why the shop offers both counter service and a self-service style where customers pick their own bread onto a tray. "For housewives, the moment they pick their favorite bread and put it on the tray is a little luxurious and exciting. In everyday life, isn't that nice?" This advice came from a friend of her mother's, and upon hearing it, Abe felt it made sense. For those with physical disabilities or small children, staff members assist by taking orders and placing bread on their trays.

Currently, Abe's most treasured possessions are a notebook detailing bread-making methods, found among the belongings of her maternal grandfather, and a book titled "How to Make Bread" published in 1947. Abe recalls that her grandmother used to bake bread at home, and she didn't know her grandfather had studied bread-making so seriously until she found this notebook.

"My grandfather learned how to make bread from a university professor around the 1930s. Right after the war, when things were scarce, he would bake bread with rationed flour and distribute it to his neighbors. My grandfather never became a baker, but I believe he would be happy that I am now running a bakery," Abe says. Her smile, filled with the satisfaction of creating delicious food for customers, is unreservedly bright.

The residents of Tsutsujigaoka are truly fortunate to have easy access to Erizo's natural yeast bread, which is both safe for the body and delicious, right in the middle of their residential neighborhood. It's a wonderfully reliable local bakery where one can truly feel how delicious food brings smiles to people's faces.