Went to meet with Miaolin Foods, the premier artisan flour and ingredients distributor in Taiwan, at one of their bakeries, Boulangerie Le Gout. The company is known as Miaolin 1964, as 1964 is the year they were founded in Miaoli County, where the Citrus Taiwanica grows. And that’s also the year I was born, both of us in the Year of the Dragon, I like to think it was fortuitous that we met going into another Dragon year.
At first Miaolin Foods specialised in Taiwan-grown grain, flour, oil and ingredients but in 2005 they started importing Japanese flour. Today, with the huge interest in Japanese baking, they’re right in the top place to guide bakers.
Miaolin are an amazing company with a top product development bakery plus and teaching laboratory, really cool people working there, felt like part of a cool culinary university campus. And one of the bakeries they run is Boulangerie Le Goût, a retail chain that combines French and Japanese baking with Taiwanese and Chinese touches.
A soft white dough, similar to their white toasting bread, filled with the puree of cooked purple taro root mixed with fresh cream, sugar and walnuts.
Soft walnut rolls filled with cream cheese before baking, wonderful idea.
A ‘s’ shaped twist of walnut bread.
Twists of croissant dough baked inside a Pullman loaf tin, very fashionable right now (2023/24) but possibly a novelty.
A Japanese-style tin loaf that’s known in Japan as Igirisu-pan which translates as “English Bread”, and is usually made as two pieces in the tin, with a slightly open crumb structure. I did taste their “shokupan” and it was mind-blowing, the most extraordinary texture.
Bagels shaped in a Japanese style, with the distinctive tuck where the ends join.
All-butter palmier, very popular for Lunar New Year.
