Thanks to pastry chef and baker Wu Pao-chun (吳寶春), dried lychees have become so popular that the nation’s farmers have not been able to meet increasing demand from domestic and foreign bakeries.
Dried lychees were one of the ingredients Wu used to make his winning “Taiwan-style” bread at the 2010 Bakery World Cup in France, where he won the title of Master Baker in the bread category.
Since Wu’s victory in March and the publication of his recipe, local bakeries have ordered more than 10,000kg of dried lychees, he said.
PHOTO: CNA
With supply falling short of demand, Wu said local farmers have limited Japanese importers to 1,000kg.
“That will definitely not be enough to meet Japanese needs,” said Wu, who has been invited by a flour company to visit Tokyo on Sunday to share his know-how with hundreds of representatives from Japanese bakeries.
“The government should do more to combine bakery expertise with local farmers to promote Taiwanese fruit exports,” Wu said, since many people in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia love the fruit.
The government could act to ensure stable quality and supply of the fruit, he said, noting that some Taiwanese lychees have too much pesticide residue, which could prevent them from meeting Japanese standards.
“What I can do is develop good recipes that combine local ingredients with international baking techniques, and I think that is meaningful,” said Wu, who was also a winner of the Louis Lesaffre Cup in 2007 and a silver medalist in the 2008 Bakery World Cup’s team competition.
Wu said he is also developing new products using Taiwanese pineapples, bananas and oranges.
“I have a special regard for pineapples, because my late mother used to plant pineapples in Pingtung,” Wu said, adding that he wants to develop breads, jams and cakes featuring the fruit.
With the government trying to boost banana sales to help farmers cope with a price drop, Wu said bananas, along with chocolate, are ideal ingredients for making tasty Viennese pastries.
“It may take me some time to develop a successful recipe. But once I’ve done it, I will teach others the following day,” he said.
Wu said that he is not afraid of sharing his knowledge with other pastry chefs, which he described as a kind of self-cleaning process.
“I can start learning new things after I return myself to zero,” he said.
Wu, who made a name for himself in Kaohsiung before moving to a bakery in Taipei, said he plans to open his own shop in Kaohsiung by the end of next month — after an oven arrives from Germany.
The German oven will cost him about NT$1.7 million (US$52,000), almost triple the cost of a high-end local oven, but he said it will ensure the bread’s moisture and flavor.
Wu said he is not in a hurry to open more shops in Taiwan.
“I need to be 100 percent sure that product quality will be the same before I open a second bakery,” he said.
Wu also said he has turned down many investment offers from China because he believes only a wholly owned bakery can grant him the freedom he needs to develop his art.
“I want to open a bakery with products that taste so good people from Taipei or Taichung will take a high-speed train, or people in China or Japan will take a flight, just to visit,” he said.
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