Bakery: Qiaomai Bakeries (喬麥烘焙坊)
Address:
No. 397, Zhongshan Road, Hualien
Website:
facebook
Style:
Chinese
Price:
$$
A small bakery located along Hualien's "main" street, Qiaomai is open fairly late (at least it was open when I walked past it in the evening) and pumps out freshly baked bread, both sweet and savoury, throughout the day, though after a certain time they do start stuffing into plastic bags. While the majority of items are bread or savoury buns (with quite a number of green onion/cheese varieties), they have all the classic sweet buns with some cakes and puddings by the counter.
Seeing as they came fresh from the oven (at least, fresh from the cooling rack) and older ones were being packed into plastic bags, I grabbed a "Mexican milk bun". ($35; 墨西哥奶酥) Based on my previous Chinese bakery experience, I always associated Mexico buns with chocolate, but I guess the name isn't because it's a chocolate bun, but because of the thin crepe-like layer on top of a standard sweet bun? Learned something new.... Whether it was because the bun was too fresh or the bread too airy, the slightly crispy outer shell turned into a sort of souffle and shrivelled on me. The top got soft, almost soggy within minutes of being packaged. That top, however, was the definite highlight of the bun, especially as the bread underneath was lacklustre - this was my main issue with it. So much so that it could equally suit a savoury meat bun; a sweeter, more fluffy dough would have worked better than generic, one-recipe-fits-all bread.
Rating: **1/2
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