Saturday, December 27, 2014

A vegan bakery - Love in Bread (Closed)

When it comes to vegan bread, I usually buy baguettes from Momo or Swiss Bake out of convenience. (Not so) recently, much to my delight, a vegan bakery, Loveinbread has opened in Singapore! But as usual it took me a long time to finally go check them out.


Everything on display look yummy. I bought 3 items during my first visit and followed with a number of other items in subsequent visits. I think I've tried almost every thing, except for a few items. Below are a list of bread and pastry I've tried.

Bread
 
Sunflower seeds and dates ($1.70): a bit crusty with small pieces of dates embedded within, adding a touch of sweetness to the bread bun. Though this is wholesome and tasty, unfortunately, I find that the size of the bun seems to be getting smaller in my subsequent purchases.
Chocolate almond bun ($1.90): among the 3 breads I bought, I like this most, with a prominent yet not overly dark chocolate flavour and bits of fragrant nuts to munch on. Same case as the sunflower seeds with dates, the bun seems to be getting smaller during my subsequent purchases.

Orange peel bun: This is a soft bun with marmalade jam filling. The good thing is that the marmalade is not overly sweet but it tastes pretty similar to spreading marmalade on bread.

Walnut raisin: Also a bit crusty, with raisins embedded within, but I prefer sunflower seeds with dates as the dates doesn't taste as sweet as the raisins (strange... shouldn't dates be sweeter?) Also, you probably can find walnut raisin in other bread shops while sunflower seeds with dates is more unique.

Hawaiian pizza ($4.90): has a strong milky taste which i don't like. Also, this is really oily. Only after I've eaten do I realise there is onion in the pizza, hence not suitable for Buddhist vegetarians.

Pastry
Raw tiramisu ($5.80): it consists of 3 layers, cocoa powder on top, cream in the middle and a coffee base. The ingredient list looks impressive and healthy, cashew, almond, macadamia nuts, cocoa and coffee. However, the cream is too thick to my liking. In the first place, I am not a fan of raw cashew, not sure what went on in my head when i chose this. But then, which vegan could resist a vegan tiramisu when its so hard to come by? Plus this version has no alcohol too. The base contains some raw nuts (tastes like almonds to me) which again I didn't like the combination of raw nuts and coffee. Think its probably just my taste buds, since I do see some positive comments on their facebook page for those who tried.
Muffins ($3.50 each): the chocolate almond muffin is not too sweet and has a nice texture and chocolate flavour. The banana walnut muffin also taste good, though slightly sweeter, but that's expected since bananas are naturally sweet. I would think that these are as tasty as muffins with eggs added and nobody will realise the absence of eggs in these muffins.
Cookies ($1.20 each): I didn't quite like their cookies. Not sure if its because I ate it only on the second day I bought. Both chocolate cookies and oatmeal cranberry cookies are too soft to me, though staff mentioned the former is a crispy cookie while the later is a chewy cookie. However, the chocolate cookie does have a nice chocolate flavour.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the items I've tried, just that the price is on the high side, so its not going to be a common day breakfast food.

Will go back to try the scones next time...

Update: Love in Bread has since ended operations.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Update after 2 years!

My last post was more than 2 years ago! After the episode of prolonged renovation, it was settling into the house, adapting to staying on my own, etc. There's always stuff to be busy with, a lot of ideas on my mind and things I want to do. Coffee remains my "interest" (still shooting coffee n cafes), but my latest interest is trying out vegan food eateries and doing vegan baking.

Late last year, I made the decision to stop dairy products and eggs. Though I have been a vegetarian for a number of years, and I've read about cruelty of eggs and milk production, for some reason, it took me really a very long time to make this decision, despite the feeling of guilt whenever I consume them. With an increasing intolerance towards dairy and eggs, after many incidents of stomach upset, I finally told myself, its time to stop.

It wasn't much of a problem when it comes to lunch and dinner, since I take mainly Chinese food and dairy is more of a western ingredient. But when it comes to vegan bread and pastry, its more challenging. For some strange reason, most bread out there contains dairy or eggs. I guess its expected that pastry contains eggs and dairy, but why bread? Eggs n dairy are not critical to make a nice loaf. Though some factory mass produced bread are vegan, I usually avoid them due to their unpleasant taste, which I suspect come from huge amount of preservatives. That leaves me with bakery shops, which over time, I know where and what to buy. They may not be cheap, but the options are slowly increasing, and one day, I will try making my own bread, one day...