Bakehouse

Pastry folded into a Hong Kong habit

The sourdough egg tart sets the pace for Grégoire Michaud, Chef at Bakehouse in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, where bread craft meets the counter. He founded Bakehouse in Hong Kong in 2013, first as a wholesale bakery supplying kitchens across the city, then gave the work a public room with the Wan Chai storefront in 2018. That order matters. The bench came before the queue, and the retail case grew out of dough already being mixed, proofed, laminated and baked for a wider trade.

Michaud’s route into this place runs through bread and pastry rather than restaurant theatre. His biography names an apprenticeship in Verbier, Switzerland, and a Hong Kong career that includes Baked, Bread Elements and Bakehouse. At Bakehouse, the signatures stay close to that material language: sourdough loaves, croissants, egg tarts and mango sago bolo bao. His own line, “Baking pastries has always been my craft,” is plain enough to fit the room. It is not a philosophy pinned to a wall. It is the work schedule.

Sourdough in the tart shell

Bakehouse’s most argued-over object is small enough to hold in one hand: a sourdough egg tart with a crisp, flaky crust and a creamy custard filling. The method pulls two disciplines into the same bite. Bread fermentation gives the pastry its sourdough character; lamination gives it lift and fracture; custard asks for a different kind of control, one based on heat, set and restraint. The result has become the bakery’s public shorthand, but it still depends on repetition at the bench.

The counter does not stop at the tart. Bakehouse works across naturally leavened breads, danishes, croissants, scones, cookies, sausage rolls and pies, with fine flour from the traditional Suire Mill in France among the named materials. At the restaurant branches, the bread program also carries into sandwiches, egg dishes and savoury plates. Wan Chai remains the original public expression of that range: bakery case in front, sit-down service alongside it, and pastry moving through the day rather than appearing as an afterthought.

The room around the oven

The Wan Chai room is bright and busy, with the smell of baking doing more of the talking than any design flourish. CRAFT Design, the Hong Kong-based firm behind Bakehouse’s shops, gave the branches a shared warmth, but the original site keeps a particular pressure because it combines bakery and restaurant service. The counter has to absorb quick decisions. The room gives people somewhere to sit with them.

There is a neighborhood rhythm to it: trays moving, coffee passing, laminated pastry disappearing from the case, bread leaving for tables and homes. The noise stays conversational, even when the bakery feels full. That suits the work. Michaud’s Bakehouse is not built around distance from the oven; it is built around proximity to the pass, the bench and the first bite of a sourdough egg tart in Wan Chai.