All Hands on Loaf: Jennifer Yeh of Boulangerie Nanda

Born and raised in Taiwan, Jennifer Yeh moved to New York to work in TV production for ten years. After she gave birth to her daughter Nanda – who inspired the name for her bakery – Yeh decided to return to the motherland. She had always been fond of baking, and has since developed her hobby into a thriving business in Shunyi. Agenda visited Boulangerie Nanda to taste her hearty bread and find out about her move from New York to Beijing, and from TV producer to baker.

Tell us about life before Beijing.
I grew up in Tainan and went to theStates after college. I stayed there from 1989-2006. I never thought I’d settle down in the States, especially New York, but that was what attracted me when I was young.

I worked as a TV producer for many years – it was very glamorous, but also stressful and demanding. Then in 2002, right after 9/11, I left Manhattan. We had been living close enough to the World Trade Centerthat my husband saw it collapse, and we were part of the flux that moved upstate at that time. We relocated to a ten-acre piece of land surrounded by mountains and grass. It was like an early retirement. I commuted for a few years, and then I had my daughter. That was when our lives really changed. When I became a mom, I developed a very different perspective. I don’t want to call it a mid-life crisis, but that’s more or less what it was. I wasn’t happy with my life in the States; I never felt like I really belonged. My husband was Canadian, but he still called himself a New Yorker. For me, it was time to “come home.” So we put our house on the market in April, it was sold in August and we were here by November. We were very lucky because the economy went down right after that.

Why did you choose to come to Beijing rather than Taiwan, where you grew up?
Economic reasons. Taiwan is still a small island. For people like myself and my husband, we don’t really have a footing in Taiwan – we’re both freelancers. My husband is a composer and avant-garde musician. Why Beijing in particular? We like it tough. It’s very much like New York – if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. We looked for adventure, and we got what we asked for.

Baking started out as a hobby for you – where did you learn to bake bread?
I didn’t get into baking until my early 20s. But I didn’t even own an oven back then. I would try to bake things out of my mother’s microwave. And on the record, I have to thank my husband because when we were still dating, I made my custard pie. The piecrust was so thick and the custard was so thin, but he still ate it all. I don’t take failure easily, so after that, I started taking lessons – every kind you can think of in four years time. I learned what I liked and didn’t like. That’s part of the philosophy of what I bring to this bakery – I can only do things I like and relate to. I’m not a professional trade baker, like a chef who has a calling. At this point in my life, I just want to do something I enjoy. It may not be the best business decision, but it makes me happy and gives my life meaning. It keeps me going.

What are some of the difficulties of running a bakery in Beijing?
There are far too many to list. Ingredients-wise, we’re still trying to address that issue. I’d actually like to have more competition. The market is still not there, so I’m hoping that more and more quality bakeries show up so that people can start appreciating what good bread is, instead of just settling for mediocre. We definitely have enough population. When we have more and more good bakeries, it will become cheaper to produce bread, and thus cheaper for the customer to buy it.

Baking the bread itself isn’t all that hard. It is running the business and dealing with the expat community. It’s not easy to earn a customer, but it’s very easy to lose ten. It’s such a tight-knit community, and bad news spreads very fast. So I’m very careful. Sometimes I’m so careful that if I’m not sure, I’d rather not do it because it’s so hard for me to build up brand recognition.

People ask me why I don’t sell my stuff at Jenny Lou’s. The answer is that it presents a different image, I’ll simply put it that way. I don’t want to feel shuffled into some category.

Your business motto emphasizes that you’re an artisan bakery – what does that mean to you?
These days, anyone can be a baker – they just buy the pre-mix. But here, every bread is made from scratch. I only have three types of flour: bread flour, all-purpose and whole wheat and rye, plus a little bag of wheatbran. That’s all I use. Different breads call for different formulas, and I don’t buy pre-mix because I don’t know what’s inside. Call me paranoid, but I like to know what’s in my bread. If I can make it, I will.

I call my bakery “artisan” because we really rely on the hand. Do we use machines? Yes, because being artisan doesn’t mean not using machines. But throughout the whole process, we try to use the least amount ofintervention. We use sea salt because it’s the most natural, and we don’t use too much yeast. Many places use a lot of yeast so the bread rises faster. All my bread is very solid – they usually weigh around 800 grams. Right now if you go to bakeries, you will see bread that looks like our bread. But if you hold it, it doesn’t feel the same. I like hearty bread. That’s what belongs to my memory and experience, and that’s what I want to share with my customers.

When I first hired my bakers, I made them knead the bread with their hands for a week. At first they couldn’t comprehend it – they said, “This isn’t possible, we need a machine.” But I told them, “Nonsense. I only use hands.” You need to know what you’re doing until you’ve become so good that you can use the machine to replace you. Every new formula begins with hands. Using your hands is how you can feel that the dough is pulling – that’s the beauty of baking for me. You need to smell, you need to taste. For me, that’s artisan.

That also means you try to get all the ingredients yourself and you make it yourself. The almond paste, we grind ourselves. First, I buy the big almonds with skin, soak them in hot water to get rid of the skin, and then dry them, bake them, grind them and mix them. That’s my almond croissant. That’s the only way to know what goes inside my croissant and to control it for quality. For my spinach quiche, we boil the spinach ourselves. I believe in trust – and if my customers trust me, there’s nothing I can do to compromise that.

Boulangerie Nanda
Daily 9.30am-7.30pm. 1/F, 52 Jingshun Lu (next to Giant bicycle shop), Chaoyang District (8459 0134, 139 1127 2032) Delivery available; pick-up is available at nearby Lohao stores. 朝阳区京顺路52号乐活城1层(在Giant自行车店旁边)

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This bakery is AMAZING! I cannot sing enough praises for the time, love and true dedication that Jennifer puts into her Boulangerie. I am an expat from Canada, teaching in Shunyi since August, 2012. I am a big foodie and do my "homework" thoroughly prior to selecting a shopping venue or restaurant. I stumbled upon Nanda's one day and since then I have only bought my baked goods from here. I can only hope that more of these quality style bakeries will follow suit.
A few of my favourites: Oat bran honey loaf (a hearty yet light bread); walnut loaf (crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside); cinnamon raisin bagels (yummy toasted with cream cheese)!

Monte