Loaves of patience
By RACHAEL PHILIP
rachael@nstp.com.my
The Loaf’s Yukichi Matsubara tells RACHAEL PHILIP that a good attitude is an essential ingredient in baking
SLICED, the croissant looks like a beehive with airy spaces between flaky folds of buttery pastry. We are told it has exactly 27 layers, each of which should be clearly visible.
The process of layering the dough with butter and folding repeatedly requires lots of patience and skill.
“I cannot say this is perfect but we are improving everyday,” says Yukichi Matsubara, giving us a boyish grin from under his red baseball cap.
The 41-year-old grand chef and general manager of The Loaf in Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur, helped set up this outlet and was also instrumental in the first The Loaf, set up two years ago in Pulau Langkawi.
Just like the other breads at The Loaf, the croissant may be French but he has given it a Japanese touch.
Bread is not a traditional Japanese food. It was only in the late 19th Century that the western culture of bread, rolls and sandwiches caught on in Japan and the Japanese started experimenting with breads.
Anpan took off like hot cakes, if you’d pardon the pun. The bun with a sweet red bean filling became extremely popular in Japan. It was first made in 1875 by Kimura Yasubei, who later opened the well-known Kimuraya bakery in Tokyo’s Ginza.
Matsubara, who prefers to be called Yu, can also trace his beginnings to the anpan. At that time, he had just finished school and was looking forward to enrolling at a local university to read Japanese history and to eventually become a teacher. But his parents, who ran a small outfit making cotton fabrics, couldn’t afford tertiary education.
Instead, his mother encouraged him to go and work in a bakery. So he spent eight years at Kimuraya, perfecting the anpan. Unlike regular breads which use yeast as a leavening agent, liquid sake is used to make anpan. This makes the process more complicated and the sake itself takes about 10 days to ferment.
Soon, Yu found he had a real talent for baking and craved to learn more. He left for Paris to work in a boulangerie to learn to make French breads. For six months, Yu absorbed everything he could.
“Besides learning to make croissants, campagnes (country bread) and baguettes, I was eager to know more about the French people, their customs, culture and tastes,” he says.
When he returned to Japan, Yu was invited to work with well-known pastry chef Sakurai. He was put in charge of the bakery section.
“I was over-confident. I had the experience and an excellent background. I had spent eight years at Kimuraya and all that knowledge about baking that I picked up in France,” he says.
Yet, things did not work out. His section was not performing. He could not get his staff to do what he taught them.
“I was really depressed. I wanted to quit everything! I could not understand what went wrong.”
Then Sakurai stepped in and told Yu that if he gave up now, he would lose everything.
“Sakurai became my mentor. He changed my life. He made me realise that to be successful, I needed more than kitchen skills. I needed patience and perseverance. I also had to develop leadership skills.”
Two years ago, Yu met Jiro Suzuki, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s partner in M&M Consolidated Sdn Bhd. Suzuki and Mahathir were planning to open a bakery in Langkawi and were looking for someone to train the staff.
Yu accepted the challenge and conducted three months of training for the staff prior to the opening of The Loaf. He never forgot the lessons Sakurai taught him and was keen to impart this to his new staff.
“Initially it was an uphill battle. If work started at 6am, they only woke up at 6am. There was no punctuality, no discipline, no enthusiasm. The spirit was not there.
“During prayer times, they disappeared for long hours. When I questioned them, they insisted that they were praying but they smelled of cigarette smoke.”
After the three-month period, one third of the staff walked out. But Yu was happy with the ones who stayed as they showed a tenacity that he was proud of.
“They’ve got 100 per cent kitchen skills and 100 per cent good attitude,” he says of them and his present crew at The Pavilion.
“I have since learned that those who talk a lot about their skills and experience are the worst people to hire,” he says, laughing. After all, he was like that once too.
Yu spends close to 12 hours a day at The Loaf in KL. A lot of the time is spent creating new recipes, fusing different flavours with traditional dishes and whipping up new versions of conventional breads.
Inspiration, he says, seeps in all the time, even when he is in the shower, eating or sleeping.
The breads lined up in the store look familiar but they smell different. Some look distinctly original. There are also jars of confiture made up of flowers such roses and lavender.
His latest offering is cheesecake cupcakes in 40 flavours in a lighter, fluffier version. These include flavours of cendol, pandan and durian (of course) as well as green tea, lemon and berries.
“They are called U Hu Hu. That is the sound Japanese women make when they laugh,” he explains.
Yu has not been home since he started work at Langkawi. Instead, his parents have come to visit him a number of times. He still harbours hopes of teaching but this time, he’s thinking of a baking institute in Malaysia.
“Teaching is also a learning experience for me. My team members sometimes ask me some really interesting questions, things I’ve never thought of. I’ve had to go back and do research to make sure I have a good answer for them,” he says.