For many, Serangoon Garden Bakery and Confectionery is a veritable institution that has been delighting generations their freshly-baked buns
There’s something endlessly comforting about fresh bread. That warm, yeasty fragrance and the warm embrace of carbohydrates that one experiences in childhood and carries with them well into old age. For Singaporeans, it’s undoubtedly milk bread, an Asian invention that makes use of tangzhong, a paste made by cooking flour with water. Also known as a water roux, tangzhong improves the texture of bread by helping the dough hold moisture.
You’ll find the same fluffy, squishy milk buns in traditional bakeries all over the island. Made in accordance with local tastes, the staple is a combination of pillowy-soft crumb and sweet flavour that the Asian palate considers luxurious. It’s the antithesis of the unyielding, tangy-savoury profile of today’s artisanal sourdough loaves, and is yet still a firm favourite among Singaporeans.
GIVING THE DAILY BREAD
Over in Serangoon Gardens, Uncle Sim Bak Sun is a fixture, and has been for the past 42 years that he’s been running Serangoon Garden Bakery & Confectionery. The spritely septuagenarian even recalls the exact day when he moved from a shop house in Maju avenue into Serangoon Gardens Market—2nd January 1995. “I have been selling my buns in Serangoon Gardens for a long time. When the landlord sold the shophouse… we opened our stall here in the market, and we have no plans to move,” he says.
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