Is BALMUDA Toaster Oven Worth the Price?
About BALMUDA and Gen Terao
If you are interested in BALMUDA toaster, you might want to know a little bit about the company. BALMUDA was founded by Gen Terao in Tokyo in 2003. Terao is Japanese entrepreneur who wanted to be a rock star when he was young. When he realized that he didn’t have enough talent to be successful in the music industry, he decided to become an entrepreneur – a rock star of the business world. He wanted to be one of the top notch global leaders like Richard Branson (Virgin), Steve Jobs (Apple) and Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia).
With big ambition, he self-taught manufacturing and started BALMUDA in 2003. He tried to innovate product categories that hadn’t been looked at for long time, and finally released its iconic toaster oven in 2015. Terao came up with the idea of this totally new toaster when was having a BBQ party with his friends. It was a rainy day, and everything was wet. By accident, someone put some pieces of bread in a barbeque pit. The results were heavenly, Terao remembered. It was crunchy outside and perfectly soft/moist inside. So he decided to try a new toaster oven that could make a perfect toast.
BALMUDA toaster technology
After so many experiments, Terao and his staff realized that the key for the “perfect toast” Terao ate was not charcoal or temperature of the BBQ pit. It was the moisture in the atmosphere on that wet day! That is the reason why the BALMUDA toaster uses steam as part of the technology. The steam makes super-crunchy outside and perfectly soft and moist inside.
There’s one thing you need to remember though: BALMUDA is a Japanese company and aimed to make a perfect Japanese 食パン (shoku pan) toast. Japanese shoku pan is basically white sandwich bread, but uses good amount of sugar to make it soft and sweet. Japanese are obsessed with soft/tender food, and breads are a no exception.
If you like soft bread, BALUMDA toaster may be for you. But if you prefer other types of bread that are not necessarily soft, you may want to think twice. It is also good at re-heating (or baking) pizza, deep fried foods such as fried chicken. It makes sense as it uses steam to achieve the right moistness inside and crunchiness outside.
What happened to the BALMUDA phone?
Another side story about BALMUDA. After a series of success, they attempted to enter a big market: they launched BALMUDA phone in 2021. After so much hype, though, they were forced to stop selling the product because they couldn’t overcome the technical shortcomings. It must have been their biggest setback, but hopefully Terao and his company will come back with new ideas.
Reference: https://www.1101.com/terao_gen/
