Meet Takashi Aizu – the Japanese baker who’s taking Instagram by storm
We are all ardent followers of food pages on social media. After all, who doesn’t like breathing heavily at exquisite food they’ll probably never get to eat? But the reason we love it all the more is because it’s not just the food we’re interested in, but the art of making it.
The reason Tastemade is such an instant success is because it combines food and art, with its own individualistic style, method and delivery. Ask any food photographer and they’ll tell you that each picture will have to fixate on a specific resolution, angle, contrast and mode and about fifteen trial and error runs before the one that gets a million hits online surfaces.
Takashi Aizu is a Japanese baker whose short videos on Instagram will make you drool like a bulldog. With over 22,800 followers and over 400 posts, Takashi releases pictures and snap videos of mouth-watering dishes. But that’s not what sets him apart from the other noteworthy bakers of the world.
Takashi has a specific camera which can withstand high temperatures which he places on the inside of the oven to record the entire baking process. Once he gets the footage, he uses the time-lapse feature to shorten it to about ten to fifteen seconds. This way, viewers can actually get a close-up view of the whole process, from the dough heating up, to the ingredients inside it bubbling out and the crust forming.
Every second of the video is sweet torture, making you experience pangs of hunger even after a full meal. When I got in touch with Takashi via mail to ask him about his work, he confessed that he wasn’t too strong in English but was delighted to hear that he and his work had made it across to India. He said that he was honoured that people here were following his work and that he hoped to do them justice.
From Wagashi, the traditional Japanese confectionary, to English pastries and patties to French croissants, Takashi covers all kinds of global desserts and, boy, do they look scrumptious. Takashi’s work will make you throw on an apron and start mixing milk and cocoa. It’ll also have you reaching out to Krispy Kreme once that blows up in a disaster.
In some of his more informative videos, he shows his audience how to make certain desserts – from mixing the dough, specifying the ingredients and putting it all together to bake inside the oven. He even puts up pictures of the finished products, so his audience can see what it would result to.
Takashi uses Instagram as his main platform for broadcasting his work due to its instant features for videos and snaps and also because it easier for people to follow compared to Facebook or Snapchat. His work goes to show how using social media as a key tool to promote your business can get you a massive following and even have it reach across the globe.
To get a (figurative) taste of Takashi’s work, follow him on Instagaram on: takashi_aizu. Statuatory warning: Could cause excessive drooling.