The bread course is here to stay—here’s why

Yet one can’t help but wonder, Why serve your bread course in the middle of a degustation? “If we were to place it in the beginning, a lot of the time, the focus of the guest would not be there” Boutwood explains. “Placing the bread course within the meal, just after halfway ensures that the guest treats and understands the complexities of the bread course, and ultimately, enjoys it more.” 

The latest establishment to hop on the trend is Hapag, which just opened its doors at The Balmori Suites earlier this month with chef Thirdy Dolatre, chef Kevin Navoa, and operations manager/sommelier Erin Ganuelas at the lead. “One of the reasons we wanted to introduce a bread break in the middle of the entire meal was to highlight the bread, making it more than just a starter,” Dolatre adds. It’s important to note that we’re not talking about your typical cookie-cutter bread and butter; these bread courses—which have grown increasingly complex, laborious, and significantly impressive—are indeed worthy of our attention and appreciation.

The fifth course of Hapag’s latest menu, Metodolohiya includes a plate of buttery sourdough whole wheat bonete bread, flash-fried to a golden crisp, alongside mulberry-calamansi jam with smoked pork, as well as gamet butter with the rendered pork fat. “The movement for quality bread has become significantly more noticeable in the Philippines,” observes Dolatre. “Gone are the days of mere commercial dinner rolls or a cold, dry baguette. Bread courses are no longer an afterthought or just a filler; now, they are crafted with ample time, thought, and effort.”

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For chefs like Mendez and Boutwood, the decision to elevate their bread offerings stems from a personal obsession, too. “I’m a bread person,” Mendez casually admits. “I have always wondered why bread was treated so simply when it can provide so much enjoyment. I wanted to give it the recognition it deserves.” Meanwhile, Boutwood’s affinity for bread has reached astronomic heights with Helm’s Star Wars-inspired menu, which features their house sourdough with a three-day retard ferment, a beef fat brioche lightly laminated with caramelised onion and oregano jam, and a variety of spreads: truffle butter, kalamata butter, cultured and burnt butter, and last but not least, rendered pork back fat with garlic and herbs. “Bread has been a love of mine for so many years now, and I’ve only entrusted a couple of our team members to make it if I do not have the time to do it,” the chef divulges. 

Chef Mikee Lopez, who runs up-and-coming restaurant Tandem with her fiancé Alex Tan, shares similar sentiments: “Bread has always been such a fundamental food across the world, and because we see it as something so basic, it’s easy to overlook—but it’s also precisely why it gives us so much joy and comfort. I make the bread myself every day because I enjoy making them and find the process interesting and therapeutic.” In their new menu centred around emotions, their bread takes the form of a multicoloured loaf, folding in spinach and purple cabbage dough to mimic mouldy bread. Paired with smoked blue cheese butter, the sourdough flips the script on the comforting bread course, depicting a powerful emotion: disgust. 

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The bread course is also an effective vehicle to connect with guests and relate a restaurant’s identity through food. “We decided to toy with the idea of re-visiting my favourite Filipino bread, which is the ensaimada,” shares chef Stephan Duhesme, recounting the origins of their ensaimada course at Metiz. “I had heard about old recipes that used insane amounts of egg yolks. It turns out our head chef Kevin had one such old recipe from his lola. We compared it to other recipes, but his had the most amount of egg yolks, butter, and cheese so we figured it’d be the best tasting. We tried it and loved it. Our only contribution was to caramelise it in more butter and brown sugar and deglaze it with patis. That’s what made it our own.” A product of both heritage and experimentation, layering contrasting textures and bold Filipino flavours, the new addition is a delicious, eloquent representation of the restaurant’s cuisine.

Read more: Reframing fine dining: What has to change? An honest conversation with chef Stephan Duhesme

Strengthening your bread offering has also posed rewarding challenges for the team. Now on its third menu, Mōdan draws inspiration from Mendez’s travels and accents its modern Japanese menu with influences from other Asian countries; their gyofun-dusted Japanese focaccia, paired with wakame lawar and a dollop of burnt coconut butter, is an ode to Cambodia’s exceptional coconuts. However, the restaurant does not have a dedicated pastry chef, and the whole team has had to learn the ropes of breadmaking. “We found that, with bread, it asks that you listen to it instead of manipulating it,” Mendez reveals. “We’ve trained our team to listen closely to bread because it will speak to you, tell you how it would like to be handled to reach its full potential.”

Bread has long played an integral part in the restaurant experience, and its symbolism in various food cultures is incredibly profound—if anything, it’s high time this unsung hero got its time in the limelight. “We’ve been making bread for more than 10,000 years,” comments Duhemse. “Every culture has been affected and influenced by flour, water, and salt one way or another—yet it is something we very rarely take into account or respect.” Creative, inspired, and above all delicious, it seems the bread course is here to stay, for the better.

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