The history of the colonisation of Asia is written in its bread. Pandesal, the national breakfast bread of the Philippines, was borne of Spanish colonial rule but processed by the USA. The bread came from the more Spanish pan de suelo, crusty “bread of the floor” cooked on the clay base of the oven from the 1600s, but as M. Paramita Lin writes:
Pan de suelo is likely the precursor to pandesal, which didn’t come about until the American colonial era; Americans objected to eating bread cooked on the oven floors and thus pandesal, baked on metal trays, was born. But even then, it didn’t look like the rolls that are sold now. (Food historian) Sta. Maria quoted Alice Fuller, who wrote Housekeeping: a Textbook for Girls in Public Intermediate Schools in the Philippines, writing in 1911 that pandesal was “[a] small oval-shaped loaf of bread very common in the Philippines. Prepared much the same as ordinary bread, but baked much harder. The loaf, when baked, is 9 to 15 centimeters long, 7 to 9 centimeters wide, and about 4 to 6 centimeters thick. Prior to baking the loaf is gashed longitudinally on top so that the baked loaf may be easily broken into halves.”
Over time, pandesal has moved from a loaf to a smaller, sweeter bun but more than 90% of the Philippines milling wheat imports still come from its more recent colonizer, the USA.
Outside of the western suburbs, there aren’t many other Filipino panaderia in Melbourne. There are two in Braybrook (Masarap and just around the corner, Papabear Bakehouse) and one in St Albans, (Manila’s Bread Bakery). Papabear is better for Filipino sweets and cakes, Masarap which has been in the small Churchill St shopping strip for about 20 years is more focused on yeasty provisions which they sell from the shopfront and distribute to other grocers around Melbourne.
Masarap is Tagalog for delicious. Their pandesal is delicious. They sell enough of it that it is warm whenever you get there, and generally, never on display in the front. The outside of the buns is rolled in breadcrumbs, a reminder that pandesal cannot exist without bread already existing before, inside is pillowy. It’s a sweet-savoury carb hit.
Masarap Bakery
178 Churchill Ave, Braybrook VIC 3019