Favorite #4 – True Baking Creativity

Posted at July 30, 2008

All over Taiwan there are loads of little bakeries that sell all kinds of snacks; great for breakfast, lunch or a quick snack. For almost every coffee or tea shop you find, there’s a bakery nearby, and for about a buck (30 NT) you can get a tasty pastry. Perfect for a metropolitan city where people are always on the go.

Some of the places are pretty small and have fairly standard items. However, at just about every bakery there are a bunch of concoctions that seem at least a little ludicrous. You’ve still got all the traditional lighting-with
French pastries and all that other
stuff you see in every bakery in the world, but there’s there’s the
local section, and each place seems to specialize in at least a few of their own combinations. There are a lot of pastries (~ 35% of them) here with meat in them. It is almost always Pork and comes in one of three forms:

Hot dogs / sausages
Bacon
Shredded pork / Pork flakes (I don’t know what it’s called exactly)

At first it’s kinda funny to look at, and you’d wonder who eats it, but after a while you start getting addicted…

There is a bakery near school called Fashion & Bakery. It has by far the most variety of pastries of any place I have seen. A few of my favorites:

Hamburgers. Strait up, room temperature cooked hamburgers on a bun.
Small pizza type pastries with everything from bacon to mushrooms and corn.
Italian style Parmesan cheese with ham inside.

I am told by Nono and another friend or two that these kinds of pastries are all over Japan too. I can’t say that I noticed these many varieties of pastries there, but who knows.

You can click this link to see a few pictures I took at various bakeries. I’ve been told I can’t take pictures at some, so I didn’t use the flash and a lot of the pics have a weird yellow color on account of the fluorescent lighting. Guess you gotta visit to see em.