Bakerzin

Address 9 Raffles Boulevard #01-23/24/25 Millenia Walk

Opening Hours 10.30am - 11pm (sun - thu), 10.30am - 12am (fri, sat, & PH)

He grew up in the east playing around his father’s successsful Seng Choon Bakery in Marine Parade. He later studied the art of bread and pastry at the reputable Bakery Science and Technology School in Thailand.

Then, by the late 80s, he toyed with the idea of and went on to set up a bread factory with what he thought was sufficient knowledge to revolutionize the industry and with almost 3 million bucks of his dad’s hard earned retirement dough.

He lost it all within a year and gained a mountain of debt.

So he struggled with a pastry and dessert chef job at a top restaurant and started making cakes for friends from home. The demand for this home made cakes and desserts was overwhelming and he sold “more than he can bake”. Strangers began knocking on his door to place orders.

So, Daniel Tay did the prudent thing, he set a humble Baker’s Inn in Sembawang.. Ironically, he was asked to speak at a forum and touched on his failure. Immediately offers of a franchise came pouring in. Today, almost twenty outlets region wide later, he’s come full circle and cleared his old debt. It underwent a re-branding exercise recently and it’s now renamed Bakerzin.

He recalls he “ just have this passion for the art of bread and knew nuts about running a business. I made the painful 3 million dollar mistake to sell frozen dough, instead of frozen proof dough” explaining how cost, technology and a lack of the finer knowledge of the art of frozen proof dough did him in.

Frozen proof dough is the stage when the bread is fully and perfectly fermented and is ready for baking. A seller just chucks it into the oven and viola! Unlike frozen dough, which still requires some settling on the customer’s part before baking.

He was in his element when I engaged him on a conversation on bread making. “I’m not a fan of Breadtalk’s style of bread making which uses a sort of “no time dough” technique. The beautiful art of fermenting the dough is absent. But hey, Singaporeans like like cos it’s sweet and milky, though it’s not quite bread to me.” He much prefers the Four Leaves brand of breads which made him go on about flavour, texture, yeasting, liquid fermentation, proofing, temperatures and the distinct differences in the art of bruschetta, foccacia, sour dough and longer fermentation times, French bread etc…I had to stop him because I have a copy deadline to meet.

These days, he’s back to play. In between golfing and traveling, he set up the Caffebar in Parkway Parade “for my sister”, sounding like it’s some favour he’s returning her. He stole a chef from a fine restaurant and made him churn out his signature duck confit , salmon roulette and clam pasta. Which basically was an excuse to finish it off with his Bakerzin’s classic sweets like the Cookies n’Cream cakes, New York Cheese cake and their Panna Cotta Raspberry cream.

Now, this O level graduate have “restored my father’s losses and his confidence in me” and is currently toying with the idea of restoring his dad’s old Seng Choon legacy with a totally retro bakery concept.

He parts with a vision on the art of playing with such ideas “think big…start small.”