Much more than just a bread shop

Breads, scones and hot cross buns, all so good.

OCT 10 — Bread always makes me happy; whether I’m eating it, or breathing in its aroma as it’s baking. But when was the last time you sank your teeth into some really good bread? Something always falls short: it’s too soft and cottony, too sweet or too greasy.

Since The Bread Shop opened in Damansara Heights, it’s been creating a buzz, mainly because the owners are dedicated to bread, the wonderful ones that they remember from childhood, or from studying and travelling abroad.

Walk in and breads — huge loafs — baguettes, croissants and Danish pastries come into your line of vision. There are so many varieties for you to salivate over. But that lovely aroma hits you first. The Bread Shop reminds me of a cafe I visited in Adelaide, Australia, with deliberately distressed walls, cement floor, stainless steel lamps, and high wooden tables. There’s beauty in the clean lines; in a vase of flowers reflected in a slanted, overhead mirror at the side table.

A complete meal – melted cheese on croissant topped with pastrami, mango slices.

I had wisely skipped lunch, to be wowed an hour later by the Melted Cheese on Croissant topped with beef pastrami and mango slices drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette. I piled everything, including the salad and mango on the croissant, and ate it all together. So you get the crisp greens with roasted onion dressing, the tart vinaigrette on the sweet, fragrant mango, the lovely thick slices of pastrami and you bite into melted cheese on a flaky, buttery, light croissant.

My table started piling up with Danish pastries after this: the Smoked Turkey with cheese, fresh tomatoes and basil, the Sausage Cheese Roll, Apple Danish, Banana Scotch, Cinnamon Swirl and Chocolate Danish. Half of this and that made many wholes. I stayed on the savoury side first: the smoked turkey on melted cheese, cherry tomatoes and fresh basil was really good.

If you are used to those thin, plasticky sausages in a soft roll, you would love this Sausage Cheese. It’s a thick, meaty chicken sausage with bounce and bite and bursting with flavour.

I ventured onto the light Apple Danish, with enough chopped apple and raisins on top of a custard layer of this croissant pastry, the crispy layers of which open up. The best thing about it is that the pastry has buttery substance, not just flaky layers.

The Banana Scotch Danish is a bestseller: the lattice-topped pastry hides within it lots of banana, drizzled with a butterscotch sauce. It has given the Cinnamon Swirl (which was in the lead) a run for its money. Customers actually call up and reserve this one. Banana has more appeal for me and it’s just so delightful with the butterscotch sauce.

I would like the Cinnamon Swirl to be a little less sweet though the sticky cinnamon layers get me too. The Chocolate Danish is truly a kiddie treat — there’s chocolate inside.

Crusty baguettes in a class of their own.

In-between I was asked to try a wonderful chicken curry served with four slices of toasted baguette or two slices of toast. I wondered about the two slices of toast but a look at the size of the loaf told me why. The owners are used to big loaves of Hainanese bread, and they want their breads to be like those. The prices of these wholesome and hearty breads have to be seen to be believed. It’s double or triple the size of any loaf, and yet the price of an organic wholemeal, for instance is just RM11.80, organic dark seed RM9.80, multi-grain RM8.80.

Back to the chicken curry: it’s intense with spice flavours, and Indian curry leaves, made to a family recipe. It’s a runny curry, so delicious you would remember it. The baguette slices were just perfect dipped in the curry. Mention must be made of the baguettes here — they are heavy, as they should be.

And I have found the perfect scone here. It has the right texture, very buttery and does not stick to the roof of your mouth or in your throat when you eat it. You can have this plain or with raisins. The owners have taken a lot of trouble to get it right.

The distressed wall, the mirror and flowers … quite eye-catching.

Again the low prices floor me — why is it just RM3.80 for two large plain scones, and RM4.80 for two raisin scones? A large croissant is just RM2.80, and good butter is used for making all these. The various Danish pastries were RM4.80, the sausage cheese roll RM5.80, Smoked Turkey Danish RM6.80. The beef pastrami sandwich I had was just RM16.80.

Thank goodness unsold breads are donated to orphanages, and not sold with prices further lowered as is the practice.

The shop makes a great cup of coffee too — I did so love my cappuccino.

Breads, Danish pastries and scones make a great gift (instead of chocolates and wine) too and the shop can put these in special boxes. It also makes its own dukkah; a spice and nuts dip for bread with olive oil.

The Bread Shop is located at 11 Jalan Setiakasih 5, Bukit Damansara, 50490 Kuala Lumpur (Tel: 03-2093-8734). It’s opened from 8am to 7.30pm daily, and from 8am to 5pm on Saturday. It’s closed on Sundays and public holidays.