Famed Taiwanese bakery Wu Pao Chun to open in Shanghai
More ways to work that bun.
Champion Taiwanese baker Wu Paochun will be opening his eponymous store in Shanghai later this year in a tie-up with Singaporean bakery chain BreadTalk.
Besides Shanghai, the joint venture with BreadTalk will see Wu Pao Chun Bakery expand to Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore, reported Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times.
Wu Pao Chun first opened in 2010 in the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung and currently has two other stores in Taipei and Taichung. The bakery known for its loaves that combine European bread-making techniques with Taiwanese ingredients.
One such item is the rose-lychee bread. The fruit is soaked in lychee wine, then baked with French flour, organic Puli rose petals, Californian walnuts, and lychee wine. This bread won Wu the title of Master Baker at the 2010 Bakery World Cup in Paris.
Another popular product is the longan-red wine bread. Longan from Dongshan is smoked for six days and baked with plumule powder, French red wine, and Californian walnuts. It came in second at the 2008 Louise Lesaffre Cup, a French baking competition.
In Taiwan, Wu Pao Chun also sells European-style varieties such as linseed and cranberry bread, Taiwanese wheat toast pastries including milky pineapple bun, and Japanese flavors like brown sugar mochi.
In Shanghai, thejoint venture with BreadTalk will see the Singaporean company control an 80 percent stake with Wu Pao Chun holding the remaining 20 percent. BreadTalk currently operates the BreadTalk chain of bakeries across Shanghai, as well as the Singapore-style coffee shop Toast Box, upmarket bakery Bread Society, and The Icing Room cake shop.
