When bread becomes a work of art.

Manami Sasaki is a Japanese artist specializing in watercolor illustration, currently working for a design company. During the social distancing period, she created artwork on slices of toast while working from home.

Every morning, she uses her slice of bread as a canvas to draw unique pictures and posts them on her account.InstagramPersonal. Her bread paintings feature diverse themes, ranging from famous artworks by talented Japanese designer Ikko Tanaka to Japanese rock gardens. The ingredients she uses can easily be found in any Japanese kitchen, such as seaweed, tomatoes, and nuts.

The image shows a slice of bread that mimics the painting.Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Shakaru's birth.By artist Ikko Tanaka. On the cake slice, the famous ukiyo-e artist Sharaku from Japan is vividly recreated with a combination of ingredients including cinnamon, margarine, sour cream, chocolate, kiwi, cherries, and blueberry jam.

Made from sardines, seaweed, salted cod roe, sour cream, and cherry tomatoes, this slice of bread depicts a hanafuda, a traditional Japanese deck of playing cards. The deck consists of twelve sets of cards, each named after a month and its associated flower. The cards themselves feature the image of the Tancho crane, a symbolic bird in Japanese culture.

A jasmine-inspired creation made from tomato sauce, margarine, mint leaves, and mustard. After being baked (right image), the flowers melt and the stamens disappear, creating an artistic blurry effect.

The artwork mimics a portrait of Sei Shōnagon, a famous female writer and poet who lived around 1000 during the Heian period of Japanese history. This elaborate slice of bread is made with sour cream, sardines, squid, salmon, purple cabbage, shrimp, seaweed, and cheese.

The cake is inspired by Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by filling the broken parts with lacquer, often coated or mixed with gold, silver, or platinum powder. The slice of bread is created based on the Kintsugi philosophy – "the wound is where the light enters within you." The artist uses sour cream, edible gold leaf, and ketchup on top.

These two slices of bread are themed around the works of the renowned ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro, such as Chojiya Misayama. Unlike other paintings of beautiful women (a genre representative of ukiyo-e), Utamaro's works particularly focus on the woman's face and facial expressions in close-up shots. Sasaki used many characteristic Japanese materials such as cod roe (Mentaiko) and ink to recreate these two paintings.

Under the photo posted on Instagram, Sasaki shared that it was very hot when she made this cake, so she chose a Japanese goldfish theme, creating a picture of two fish swimming with ingredients from prosciutto ham, squid, chervil, and a sour cream topping. Goldfish are a common image in the life and art culture of the Land of the Rising Sun, symbolizing many meanings such as a father figure, sons, good luck, happiness, and wealth.

The bread slice, inspired by a rock garden—a distinctive feature of Japanese culture—is made from sour cream, nuts, and matcha. In the caption for the posted photo, Sasaki revealed that the cream patterns on the bread slice can be created using a comb, and that using basil instead of matcha makes it delicious when eaten with the sour cream. The artist also shared that her favorite rock garden is Ryoanji Temple.

Not only does the artist recreate aspects of Japanese culture and art, but sometimes he also creates cake slices with very "Western" themes. This cake, inspired by romantic American comics from the 1950s, uses many ingredients, including curry powder, cod roe, squid, carrots, etc. Sasaki even cuts the cake in half to create a frame-shifting effect just like in the comic.

The time it takes to create a piece of art depends on the subject matter and averages around 3 hours. The most elaborate pieces take up to 6 hours to complete. When he has a lot of work to do, Sasaki usually chooses a simple subject.

The artist said, “I choose the theme the night before, thinking about the ingredients I’d like to eat the next morning. Then I go to the grocery store, buy more ingredients, and go home to get creative. About 60% of the preparation for the dish is done the night before. I wake up in the morning, finish the artwork, then take a picture and eat.”

"My favorite moment is when I'm baking bread; my creativity and my love for food become one. The aroma of the bread makes me want to eat it quickly," Sasaki shared.

Some other "bread paintings" by the Japanese designer.

An - Photo: sasamana1204