01BAKERY, the Naka-Karuizawa bakery with a terrace for your dog

Set back in a quiet residential stretch of Nagakura, 01BAKERY is easy to drive past. The sleek shop features black walls, a wooden deck, a garden that runs right up to the terrace tables. In summer the shop is busy from seven in the morning; by early afternoon the shelves have usually thinned out, and on a good day they close early because there is simply nothing left to sell.

Getting there

The shop sits at 長倉2213-8, about ten to fifteen minutes on foot from Naka-Karuizawa Station, or three minutes by car. There is a small parking lot which fills quickly on summer weekends. The bakery is open from 7:00 to 17:00 through the green season, from 9:00 in winter, and closed Monday through Wednesday.

Bread that takes three days

The interesting part of 01BAKERY is not just the shop, but the list of things they do the slow way.

The yeast is cultured in house from amazake. The flour is all domestic, including several Japanese wheats and a wholemeal they mill themselves from pesticide-free grain. The water is 岩深水, an unusually soft groundwater drawn from Mount Iwama in Shiga. The eggs come from a farm at 1,100 metres in Yamanashi where the hens are pastured; the milk is low-temperature pasteurised from Tanba; the salt is from Vietnam.

Their hard breads take three days from start to oven. You can taste the difference in some of their bakes: the faint sourness and the chew that only come from a long ferment.

There are around thirty items or so in the shop, a number of them made only for the Karuizawa store. The 放牧卵のクリームパン, filled with custard from those pastured eggs, is my personal favourite and the ideal way to end a late breakfast.

Come at seven

Karuizawa has a lot of good bakeries, but 01BAKERY is one of the few that open early.

Between 7:00 and 9:00 there is a morning set: any bread with a drink is a hundred yen off. That two-hour window happens to be the best part of a Karuizawa summer day, before the humidity arrives and while the traffic is still thin. The terrace facing the garden is quiet.

If you are staying nearby with a dog, you can take a morning walk through Naka-Karuizawa and combine it with your breakfast.

Visiting with your dog

Dogs are welcome on the terrace. The tables are well spaced, with room to park a dog stroller beside you, and the garden edge gives a nervous dog something to look at other than other dogs.

A few practical notes. You order inside and carry your tray out, so it is easier with two people, or with a dog who will wait tied for a minute by the deck. There is no indoor seating for dogs, so a rainy morning or a cold January one may be better for takeaway.

We usually go in the first half hour after opening. Umi gets her walk along the Yukawa trail which winds through the town and ends near 01BAKERY.

After the walk home

01BAKERY offers bread for humans, so if your dog would like their own breakfast treat we recommend trying our meal topper.

Karuizawa Harvest is a food brand based in Karuizawa, making small-batch toppers for dogs from wild venison from the Shinshu forests and Shinshu produce. Our first product, VENISON + APPLE (鹿肉とりんご), goes on sale this November. A little on top of the usual bowl, when you get back.