I left Japan by plane, then traveled by train, bus, and foot to my first destination: the town of Ronda. Barely able to sleep from excitement and nerves, I arrived exhausted and famished. A delicious aroma on a street corner caught my attention and I eventually tracked it to a small local bakery.

Using my rudimentary Spanish, I managed to convince the baker to share some of his bread with me. As I took my first bite, tears welled in my eyes -- I felt tension, fatigue, hope, and uncertainty. The flavor and aroma of the bread seemed to break down a dam within me, letting all my emotions flow out. Even today, I still remember the fragrance and taste of that freshly baked bread.

Our development team brought some bread along to grill with the meat. For some mysterious reason, the toast came out perfectly: crisp on the outside and moist on the inside. If we could reproduce this, we thought, BALMUDA could make a revolutionary toaster!

The following day, the team began experiments seeking to reproduce that perfect toast. Despite a full staff effort, success remained elusive. What was the secret ingredient? Was it the charcoal? The distance from the flame? The grill itself? As the process of trial and error went on, someone finally made a key observation: “Remember how rainy it was the day of the barbecue?” The answer was humidity.

It was a startling discovery: truly remarkable bread could be baked using only the power of electricity and water.

On this day, we became confident that we were on the right track.

The guiding question for the design of BALMUDA The Toaster was, “how should the toaster be designed to match the delicious food it creates?” A simply modern design would not be enough — the product needed to combine a feeling of nostalgia with uniqueness.

After reviewing proposals from countless candidates, a basic model was chosen. The design team then began working hand in hand with the technology teams on every little detail — right down to the size and placement of individual screws.

By the time they were finished, the design team had created approximately two thousand sketches and renderings for BALMUDA The Toaster.

Over a thousand hours of experimental toasting led us to develop a range of modes for different types of bread, optimizing each for the best results.