SINCE mid-September, office folk working around Killiney Road have found their daily bread choices expanding beyond kaya toast at Killiney Kopi Tiam. To busy executives grabbing lunch on the go, a new bakery at the junction of Killiney and Exeter Roads has been filling their daily carbo requirements with home-made sandwiches, bread and old-fashioned butter cakes in myriad flavours.
If the lean, flour-dusted female baker looks familiar, you may have seen her before at Archangel - the gourmet gourmet deli arm of Saint Pierre that used to be in Great World City. Yes, Audrey Tan is Saint Pierre's former executive pastry chef, who churned out their popular breads, macaroons and cakes. She's now struck out on her own, with a view to bringing back the baked goods of yesteryear but with her own upmarket edge.
Never a fan of pastry creations that are more ganache than cake, the baker with a common sense approach to baked goods has brought back the kind of cakes those of a certain vintage would remember from their youth: butter cake, marble and banana cake, upside down pineapple cake, sugar-coated doughnuts (as opposed to the frosted variety so popular now) and more, all fine-tuned by one who has perfected her craft through training stints in Belgium while she was working at Saint Pierre. She even has her own cookbook, Lust, published by Marshall Cavendish.
'Baking is my passion,' says Audrey, a straight-talking baker who knows full well the risks in coming out on her own. That's why she's pitching her cakes and breads at a mid-price level, with butter cakes starting at $2 a slice (her simple sugar doughnuts are very good), and bread from $3 for a 250gm fluffy ciabatta to $6.80 for a 600gm loaf.
Her walnut raisin bread is one of her bestsellers, along with the lightly sweet cinnamon loaf. Dairy lovers will go crazy over her spongy-chewy textured cheese loaf with its generous amount of melted cheese.
Altogether, she has around eight varieties available at any one time and they're all excellent. Walk in diners can enjoy the bread made into simple sandwiches or simply served toasted with butter and preserves.
Today is the last day to order her special Christmas hampers which have been literally selling like hot cakes. A basket of cookies, biscotti, macaroons and fruitcake goes for $48. Add her chestnut cream log cake to this for a total price of $88.
Other old-fashioned Christmas confections include apple crumble ($16), fruitcake ($16), ginger cinnamon bread ($7.80) and special Christmas berry cupcakes at $18 a dozen.
With two other bakers to pump up the volume of bread and cakes available, the advantage of Freshly Baked is that you can get super fresh bread even in the middle of the afternoon, as we discovered one day.
But the true X-factor of Audrey's breads is that they really do taste home-made, not like bigger names like Cedele or Simply Bread which have become too commercial and lost their homely flavours of yore.
One certainly hopes Audrey doesn't go that way, especially since she already has plans to open another outlet once she finds the right location. But expansion is the only way to survive in this business, says the realistic baker-entrepreneur. Getting a bigger market would also give her the leeway to expand her repertoire and introduce more elaborate cakes along the way.
For now, one thing's for sure. In a crowded pastry arena filled with fanciful creations, the unpretentiousness of Freshly Baked is as welcome as a whiff of yes, freshly baked bread right out of the oven.
Freshly Baked by Les Bijoux, 57 Killiney Road.
Tel: 6735-3298
'Baking is my passion,' says Audrey, a straight-talking baker who knows full well the risks in coming out on her own. That's why she's pitching her cakes and breads at a mid-price level, with butter cakes starting at $2 a slice (her simple sugar doughnuts are very good), and bread from $3 for a 250gm fluffy ciabatta to $6.80 for a 600gm loaf.
