Tokyo bakery has a crazy expensive 10,000-yen bread loaf set, and we’ve tried it [Taste test]

Japan’s luxury bread loaf boom was supposed to have died down, but apparently no one told this Ginza bakery .

A couple of years ago, premium-priced loaves of bread were all the rage among foodies in Japan.

Luxury bakeries sprang up one after another, with long lines of customers waiting to get in and drop 1,000 yen (US$6;30) or so on a single loaf, several times more than what you’d pay for the same quantity at a supermarket.

As is often the case, though, after a while the fad faded, and pricy bakeries began to gradually disappear and be replaced by new tenants chasing the next foodie trend.

One of the survivors of the luxury bread loaf glory days, though, is Ginza Nishikawa . ▼ Ginza Nishikawa’s flagship branch in Ginza With half of its name coming from Tokyo’s fashionable and wealthy Ginza neighborhood , you’d be correct in assuming that the bakery chain hasn’t abandoned its high-quality, high-cost philosophy regarding its baked goods.

While many other purveyors of 1,000-yen loaves of bread have had to fold up shop, Ginza Nishikawa has recently begun offering a bread loaf set, which it calls Shigoku (“The Supreme”), with an eye-watering price of 10,000 yen (US$63)! This quickly caught the attention of our Japanese-language reporter P.K.

Sanjun .

However, while P.K. and his stomach were in agreement that he should definitely try the Shigoku for himself, his wallet had a firmly dissenting opinion on the matter.

Luckily for P.K., this deadlock was resolved, or rather rendered irrelevant, when he was able to snag an invitation to a tasting event for the 10,000-yen set held at Ginza Nishikawa’s Ginza branch, which is the exclusive location offering the Shigoku.

Upon arrival, P.K. learned that the Shigoku is a set of two loaves of bread , meaning that they’re essentially 5,000 yen each.

This still makes them the most expensive loaves of bread that he’s ever tasted, though.

Why are they so expensive? Because of the ingredients Ginza Nishikawa uses.

The first of the two loaves is the Kumamoto Yamaeguri Bread , made with chestnuts from Kumamoto Prefecture, and the other is a loaf of Hand-churned Cultured Butter Croissant Bread .

P.K. tasted slices from each loaf both as-is and toasted .