Paritto Fuwatto


Coming from Germany, a country famous for its bread, I have a very distinct idea of how bread has to be like. And as much as I love Japanese bakeries for the pastries, I have to say that the bread usually does not meet my expectations. Most of the bread is just too soft and too sweet. I like bread with a crisp crust and a moist, slightly salty and sour dough. No matter if it is a white or a dark bread - I love both, as long as they are the way I described it. I know, also in Germany there are many big bakery chains and their bread often isn't that way either. But you just have to go to the little bakeries and there you usually still find the good stuff.
And in Japan people are so crazy about food that it just surprises me that something as simple as bread of all things has to be so bland and taste like untoasted toast here! And don't tell me it is because people eat rice all the time - it is not true: bakery products are very popular, too. There are good western bakeries in Japan. French or Scandinavian they mostly want to be. They make wonderful sweet things, pastries, brioche - great!
Sometimes they also offer "German bread" and oftentimes it even looks like bread in Germany, with a brown dough and some grains and seeds on top. It happened a few times that I couldn't withstand trying one again, hoping that this one could be right. That I bought it and as soon as I was out of the bakery opening the bag hastily and covertly (because it is supposed to be rude to eat while walking on the street in Japan) ripping a piece of the bread to try it: and then it is soft and sweet and with a much too fluffy crumb again and the brown colour is just made with malt, not with wholemeal.
Lately however, during one of my countless strolls around Ya-Ne-Sen (Yanaka, Nezu, Sendagi), the downtown area where I live, I came across a tiny little bakery that looked so cute and its products so natural that I just had to go inside and check it out. The painted sign in the entrance that said: おいしいパンとお菓子の店 = "shop for delicious bread (pan - from the portuguese word for bread) and sweets", was also very promising.



To put it blundly, they do not bake "German bread", but this is absolutly fine, I don't search for that! I just search for good tasting bread. In fact I think it is much more interesting when things have a local touch. And in this lovely place called Paritto Fuwatto they do taste great!
No wonder, they are all made freshly in this neat little shop, directly behind the counter. There a very friendly lady is working, who just stops kneading the dough for serving customers. All over the place where she is baking are kabocha (Japanese squash), sweet potatoes and all kind of other good ingrediences used for the breads, rolls, cookies and cakes that pile up in little baskets on a nicely arranged table beside the counter.
It is a little paradise where it is hard to decide what to take: a wholemeal roll with dried fruits or rather an intensivly green one with lots of yomogi (mugwort), a bread with a natural yeast dough and grains or corn, dark short cakes baked with black tea... The shop is so tiny, but the assortment is quite large. And everything I tried so far was sooooo delicious! The bread has a rather light colour and also no crust to speak of, but the dough has a firm texture, is not too dry and not to soft, the crumb is just right and *thanks a lot - it is not sweet! Absolutly luscious are the kabocha rolls, also firm, with a golden colour and slightly moist thanks to the little cubes of the squash inside, which is one of my favourite veggies anyway. Also moist and just sweetend with the fruits was the dried fruit roll, with fruits and nuts - a healthy and filling snack!
The black tea short cakes had an intense tea flavour, just very little sweetness and
with a very nice dry crumb, perfecty matching a cup of milk tea.
Apropos milk tea: for everyone who does not eat eggs or butter Paritto Fuwatto is also a great choice, because on their website they list which of all their products contain these ingrediences (in Japanese only, unfortunatly. But if you are able to read katakana, you will understand most names and behind the names you find the kanji 卵 (tamago) for egg and in katakana バター for butter and o or x (yes or no)- so it is quite easy to understand). And I am sure the lady in the shop is very helpful if you ask her.

I couldn't really find out whether the ingrediences they use derive from organic farming, would be nice if someone whose Japanese is better than mine could check that... but with the special atmosphere in the store, the interior with lots of wood and baskets, the fact that they use brown paper bags instead of vinyl, the emphasis on natural flavours and healthy ingrediences, etc. all that point pretty much in an organic direction. Anyway: it tastes great, that is the most important fact in my opinion. Organic ingrediences would just be a nice bonus.
And has anyone an idea what the name means? パリットフワット Paritto Fuwatto? Seems like a foreign word, because of the use of katakana.. I racked my brains but couldn't think of anything French, English, whatever that sounds similar and all dictionaries I consulted didn't help either... ideas anybody?

Update:
I have been there today again and checked out the yomogipan (bread with looooots of mugwort) and a delicious mikan (tangerine) pastry and both are highly recommendable! The yomogipan has a very refreshing and (at least for me) unusual taste and a fantastic emerald colour! See the top right pic in the new photo mosaic i made.. The tangerine pastry was not too sweet and had plenty of little candied tangerine pieces on top - delicious and such a summerly taste!

The address is:
パリットフワット
東京都文京区千駄木1-19-7
Paritto Fuwatto
Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Sendagi 1-19-7
[click address to see map]
about 5 min walk from Sendagi Metro stn, Chiyodaline.

It is open from 9am - 7pm. Closed on mondays.

9 comments:

vegetablej said...

Hi Julia:
The bakery looks nice and it's close to you I guess, which is important. Take a look at this link (there's also a link on my website) I haven't tried this bread but it says it is 100 per cent organic and looks like they might have the earthy kind of bread you are looking for. You can order online, I think.

http://www.akkordshop.com/all.htm

No idea about the name; hate that katakana; it's worse than kanji. With the little drawing looks like it might be a cartoon character, maybe a "fat parrot".

Julia said...

hehe, just today i read about exactly the same bakery called "der akkord" on another blog :D seems to be a german organic bakery in aoyama.. i will go there soon and check it out :)

vegetablej said...

Hi again Julia:

I'm waitng for the bakery review.:)

I am tagging you for a meme "8 Random Things about Myself". All the info is in a post and here is the link, but basically you just write down anything about you that you like,( 8 things) and try to persuade some other people to do the same. :) Pretty please?

http://vegetablejapan.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-first-meme-8-random-things-about.html

Martin J Frid said...

Hi Julia, thanks for your comment on my blog about Der Akkord!

I checked the website of the Paritto Fuwatto, and the ingredients are domestically farmed wheat and rye. The brown sugar is organic, and the salt is from Okinawa. I like the way they explain which breads are without egg, butter and so on, helping strict vegans and people with allergies to avoid whatever they want to avoid!

Anonymous said...

Hi Julia,

The bakery looks so nice...I want one in Trinidad :(

By the way,
Paritto means crispy
Fuwatto means fluffy
And they are Japanese Onomatopoeia.

Have a nice trip!

Julia said...

Thank you for your explanation, Koko. All those onomatopoeia in the Japanese language are fun, but hard to learn and to guess (because you can't find them in dictionaries very often)!
Yes, bread in Trinidad is also really what i mean with the term "bread".. but i miss Roti, Buss-up-shot and my beloved Doubles.. oooh, Doubles.. i shouldn't think about them :D
I sometimes cook callaloo though, that is easy to prepare and turns out quite nice with all kinds of greens since dasheen is not available in most places outside the caribbean.

Unknown said...

Hi Julia,
Just came across your blog - I'm a vegetarian who lived in Tokyo until last year, and also used to live in Germany so I love German-style bread too. I think you might like this bread shop, Mahlzeit, near Myogadani station in Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku. It's small and they make everything themselves in the tiny shop.

http://mahlzeit.hp.infoseek.co.jp/frame.htm

Anonymous said...

Hi Julia,
Your blog is awesome. A great reference for the next time my family is in Japan. My husband is Japanese (from Yokohama) and I'm American-we are both strict lacto vegetarians along with our three young sons.

Here are a couple wonderful veg places that we know about in Tokyo:

Govinda's (Nakano)
5-17-10, Nakano, Nakano-ku
Phone: 03-3387-8998
open 7 days a week.
12p-9p
Their website has an English menu page. http://www.krishna.jp/govindas/index.html


DevaDeva Cafe
http://www.devadevacafe.com/Enindex.htm

Julia said...

thank you all for your nice comments and your interesting recommendations! i want to check them out one after the other :) it seems like there are much more german breads in tokyo than i thought :D
i also found another really good bakery in kagurazaka..