Since my baking skills are pretty limited, if I want to give away homemade baked goods as gifts my best bet is to get my breadmaker out. Actually it was quite fun and fairly economical. I didn’t use the oven on any of these—they were all baked in the breadmaker using the menu settings at hand. From left to right—Matcha Bread, Japanese White Bread (shoku pan), Furikake Pan (rice sprinkles). Matcha powder can get expensive, but all you really need is culinary grade or even green tea powder which is pretty cheap. And you still get that green tea fragrance and taste. Adjust the amount to get a deeper green and/or subtle bitter tea flavor to your preference. For some reason my Matcha Bread flipped its lid, LOL.
For this set of bread by the way, they’re all variations of shoku pan so there’s nothing fancy here. They’re just fun to look at when they’re all in a row. 
The Furikake Pan is strictly experimental on my part, but it came out pretty good as a savory snacking bread. Get yourself some quality rice sprinkles from the Japanese grocery store and balance out how much to use. Mine might have been a little salty because I used too much.
And here’s the Western equivalent to this—the Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel bread. Same thing here; I added the Everything but the Bagel seasoning from TJ’s and baked on the white bread setting of my breadmaker. It’s been a while since I made this, but I don’t think I used more than 1 Tbsp. of seasoning.
By the way, did you know that TJ’s seasoning is banned in South Korea because of the poppy seeds in the ingredients? Even though the seeds themselves aren’t an opiate, the poppy plant has the same compounds that go into manufacturing pain killing drugs, so the Korean government is being extremely careful with substances that come from the same family. And all this time I thought it was only the tasty flavor that was habit forming! LOL.
My final bread is a Blueberry Loaf that I baked a few years ago that you can read about here. This was also easy, but make sure you use dried blueberries and not fresh; that way you can use the ingredients dispenser again and everything will be automatic. It comes out beautifully and makes a great gift, don’t you think?
In this post I also made a Blueberry Jam, so you can take a look at that as well. Jams only take a couple of hours in the breadmaker so it makes an easy, thoughtful companion gift with the homemade bread, I think. With the jam I used fresh blueberries.
This would go great if you’re giving a homemade loaf of Shoku Pan as a gift. I thought the flavor of this jam was great, if I do say so myself. And I just did, thank you. Of course it has no preservatives in it so it would have to be consumed fairly quickly, but I’ve been told it should last 1 to 3 weeks in the refrigerator. Here’s the recipe from Zojirushi.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Products used in this post: Home Bakery Maestro® Breadmaker BB-SSC10
Please note that these recipes were not tested by Zojirushi America.
All images by Bert Tanimoto ©2024
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