New machine makes bread from rice

Can't decide whether your side-dish should be rice or bread when you sit down for lunch in Tokyo? Well, soon you'll be able to have both in one product -- rice bread.

Four years of trial and error has led Sanyo Consumer Electronics to develop the gopan, a bread-making device that uses rice grains where all previous attempts at rice bread has needed rice flour. Just add 220 grams of washed rice along with sugar, salt, gluten, dry yeast and shortening and four hours later your loaf will be ready. Soaking the grains in water, then spinning them via rotary blades to develop the necessary paste has solved the challenge, and now the gopan can make 22 kinds of bread.

Gopan is so named after the Japanese word 'gohan' (rice) and 'pan' (bread).

At the launch, spokesperson Takahisa Takiguchi explained, "We'd like to encourage people to consume more rice, which is the staple diet in Japan, by enabling rice to be eaten as bread."

At an expected retail cost of ¥50,000 (US$575), Sanyo hopes to sell 10,000 a month and revolutionize the Japanese diet, helping Japan to be more food self-sufficient.