Iris Ohyama IBM-020 Home Bakery Bread Machine

アイリスオーヤマ ホームベーカリーIBM-020

The Iris Oyama is a popular and top-selling bread machine or home bakery in Japan. It’s affordably priced and generally well-received. Like any other bread machine, it makes the standard range of preset breads. It can also knead different types of dough, make mochi, red beans, jam, and has a stand alone fermentation function. Although the instructions are only in Japanese, it’s an easy-to-use home bakery and guaranteed to bring healthier bread to your table.

Iris Oyama IBM-020 Home Bakery Essentials

The Iris Ohyama IMB-020 bread machine is fairly standard for its size and functions. It can make a 1 pound or 2 pound loaf with the typical longer shape of home bakery bread.

There isn’t a setting for gluten-free bread which requires longer kneading. It can, however, make gluten-free rice flour bread. For savory, fruit, or chocolate breads, you have to add ingredients manually.

Pros and cons of the Iris Ohyama IBM-020 Home Bakery

The Iris Ohyama-020 is a good choice for the variety of bread it makes. There’s a rye bread and gluten-free rice bread setting which are not so common for a lower-priced machine. It’s easy-to-use and a good match for first time bread machine owners. Another pro is that it does red bean paste in addition to the usual mochi.

Having said that, it’s a bread machine for bread and doesn’t have any function for cake or cake sale. The independent bake function can be experimented with for these and gluten-free wheat breads.

Compared to a few other machines, some find this Iris Ohyama a little noisy for in the morning or into the night. The beeps can be loud and there’s no mute function. A nice inclusion is a pair of oven mitts, but a measuring spoon would have been better.

Guide and how to use the Iris Ohyama IBM-020 Bread Machine

There are 10 preset bread functions and the manual provides at least one recipe for each. All you need to make healthy homemade bread is water, flour, salt, sugar, butter, milk powder, and active dry yeast.

Iris Ohyama IBM-020-B bread menu options

1	食パン	Regular loaf
2	早焼きパン	Express loaf
3	ソフト食パン	Soft loaf
4	フランスパン	French bread
5	全粒粉パン	Whole wheat bread
6	米粉パン（小麦入り）	Rice flour bread with wheat
7	米粉パン（小麦なし）	Gluten-free Rice flour bread
8	ごはんパン	Rice bread
9	ライ麦パン	Rye bread
10	スイート食パン	Sweet bread

All wheat breads, namely 1 to 5 and to 9 to 10, follow the same method. First you add the liquids at the bottom. That’s water together with milk when substituted for milk powder. Next, you add the wheat or rice flour.

Any salt, sugar, and skimmed milk powder is mixed together and added proportionally, with portioned butter or lard, at each of the four corners. Place the yeast into an small indentation in the center. After that, you place the baking pan in the machine, plug in, and follow the menu selection.

The basic menus are easy to follow with ingredients listed for either a 1 or 2 pound loaf:

Ingredients always follow the same order: water [水], type of flour [粉], butter [バター], sugar [砂糖], salt [塩], skimmed milk powder [スキムミルク], and yeast [ドライイースト].

Types of Japanese flour

These are the general types of flour that you can buy in Japan. Whole grain wheat, rye, and specialty flours are usually not found in your typical local supermarket. Specialty flour is often best bought from an online vendor.

最強力粉	maximum strength flour	Protein 13.5～%
強力粉	strong flour	Protein 11.5～13.5%
準強力粉	medium strength flour	Protein 1０.5～1２%
全粒粉	whole grain wheat	variable
国産小麦	domestic wheat	low to high
ライ麦粉	rye wheat flour	Protein < 10g
薄力粉	all-puprose cake flour	Protein < 10g
専用小麦粉	specialty flour	variable

Most bread types require a high protein content [多く含む] or a strong flour [強力粉]. On any pack of flour you can easily see the protein content listed as [たんぱく質/含有量]. The higher the protein, the more gluten is produced during the kneading cycles.

For the Iris Oyama IBM-020, it is recommended to use a flour or flour mix of at least 11% protein content. This is especially so for flour marked 国産小麦 where protein content can vary widely.

Tips and instructions for making standard breads

Here are some tips and instructions included in the manual. Many of these apply to similar kinds of basic bread machines.

Water content and liquids

Flour doesn’t need to be sifted and you can use ordinary tap water. In the rare case of high mineral content or high alkaline water, fermentation may not succeed.

When using your own specialty flour, if the bread rises too much or holes appear, then you should experiment with reducing the water content by 5-10%.

The ideal temperature for liquids is around 25℃. If too warm the bread will rise too much, if too cold, it will not form completely. The manual recommends mixing in 5℃ degree water when room temperature is above 25℃, and 20℃ degree water when the room temperature is below 10℃.

Milk powder vs milk

The Iris Ohyama IBM-020 recommends using skimmed milk powder for most recipes. If you prefer milk then replace 6g of skimmed milk with 70mL of milk. In this case, you should also reduce the water content by a maximum of half or the equivalent of the milk volume added. These parameters may require experimentation.

Oils and sugars

You can use butter, margarine, or shortening. Butter should be unsalted and cut into thin slices. The type and content of fat can influence the crusting color.

You can use white, brown, or black sugar, and even honey. You should not use sugar cubes or zero calorie sweetener of any kind.

Types of yeast

For yeast, you should only use instant dry yeast. Other kinds of yeast are not recommended. For homemade natural yeast, you should proof the bread outside the machine and then just use the baking function.

Additional ingredients

Where a recipe calls for egg, make sure the egg is beaten into the recommended volume of water.

You can of course make flavored bread with fruit, nuts, chocolate chips, or vegetable bits. These should be added in by hand after the machine beeps ten times and rests after the first kneading. The size should be no more than 5mm, about 20-30% to the volume of flour, and water content removed a much as possible.

How to make rice bread and rice flour bread

The Iris Ohyama IBM-020 home bakery has three preset menus (6 to 8) for rice based breads. Two use rice flour. Of these (6), one is for rice flour mixed with wheat or gluten, and the other (7) is for gluten-free rice flour. Rice bread (8) is something different using left over white rice mixed with wheat flour to make a special kind of Japanese bread.

Gluten-free rice flour bread (7) requires an additional step. After about 40 minutes when the first stage 10 beeps emit, you need to use a spatula to fold in any remaining flour around the edges. At this point, you can also add in additional tasty bits [具材].

Left over rice bread

Rice bread is a special preset that is often found on a Japanese bread machine. It has a chewy texture to it. Rice bread is made from combining bread flour with left over cooked rice or cold rice [冷やごはん]. The measure of rice is added in with the water. A strong flour is added on top and additional ingredients in the usual way.

Read more about owning a home bakery in Japan

Other functions on the Iris Ohyama IBM-020 Home Bakery

If you’re buying a bread machine for its multi-functional value, then you should make sure that additional functions suit your needs.

Dough kneading functions for artisan breads, pizza and noodle doughs [kiji・生地] are pretty standard. The difference between these settings is really just the amount of kneading and proofing time.

11	パン生地	bread dough
12	ピザ生地	pizza dough
13	うどん・パスタ生地	udon & pasta dough

Preset 14 is used for making jam [ジャム作り], while 15 is for mochi [もち]. Menu 16 is used for making Japanese red bean paste [あん]. The beans require pre-boiling on a stove for about an hour. There is of course the handy dough kneading function (17) or [こねる].

If you just want to use your bread machine as a fermentation chamber [発酵] then the function for that is preset 18. Proofing or fermenting can be done from 5 min to 1.5 hours in 1 minute increments.

Finally, the last function (19) is where you just use the machine for baking [焼く]. You can bake for 10 min to 1.5 hours in increments of 1 minute. You can use this function for hand kneaded gluten free bread, or for things like casseroles, meatloaf, or whatever you find fits the bill.

Basic guide to the Iris Ohyama IBM-020 user interface

The general set-up of the Iris Ohyama IBM-020 home bakery moves from left to right. First you select the menu you require [メニュー選択]. Then, choose the loaf size which is either 1 pound [1斤] or 2 pounds [2斤] as shown in the left of the window. The timer [できあが時間設定り] is used for the customize the baking time. Either that, or you can set a delay start within 13 hours.

The crusting color [焼き色選択] gives the choice of light [うすい], medium [ふつう], and dark [こい] which appear on the right hand side of the LCD. Finally, you simply press the Start button [スタート], which you can also use to pause [一時停止] the machine during a cycle. To cancel everything, hold the start button down for two seconds.

On the top, you can see which phase the baking cycle is in. These run from kneading [こね], resting [ねかし], proofing [発酵], and baking [焼く].

Iris Oyama IBM-020 vs Sorica SB-111 / SB-122

The Sorica SB-111, or the more recent production SB-122, is also a very popular bread machine. Its pricing is competitively very similar. It’s not not as compact, but there are some key feature differences. Other features are much the same with minor differences in baking times.

Both these Japanese bread machines are equally well-appraised. The choice really rests on machine size, loaf sizes, and the key differences in presets.

With the Iris Ohyama you can do more with bread as in rye and gluten-free rice flour breads. The Sorica has soba dough and fresh butter presets. If your Japanese is not that great, the Iris Ohyama manual is easier to follow.

Iris Ohyama IBM-020	Sorica SB-111/122
1 and 2 pound loaves	1, 1.5, and 2 pound loaves
rye bread	NO
gluten-free rice bread	NO
NO	fresh butter
NO	soba dough
550 W	500 W
WDH: 249x262x294 mm	WDH: 280x320x295 mm

Because not all bread machines are equal in their functions, the Sorica SB-1D151 (price link) is in a slightly higher price range, but more specialized. It doesn’t do soft, sweet, and rye breads, nor noodle doughs. However, it does gluten-free rice flour bread, reduced sugar bread, cake, and yoghurt. It can also make and bake with natural home made yeast [天然酵母], and procures amazakes. It only makes a 1 pound loaf.

Iris Ohyama IBM-020 vs Hi-Rose HR-B120P Home Bakery

The Hi-Rose bread machine is an in-house product of the Hirose Wireless company who import and deal with electronic parts. They have a small range of household products. The Hi-Rose is relatively small and quiet while kneading. It’s a good choice for a small city apartment. The main drawback may be the lack of a stand alone fermentation function.

Iris Ohyama IBM-20	Hi-Rose HR-B120P
rye bread	NO
red bean	NO
stand alone fermentation	NO
NO	pound cake
NO	kiritanpo
550 W	450 W
WDH: 249x262x294 mm	WHD: 232×295×255 mm

Read more about the Hi-Rose Home Bakery