TEO SHAO NING (CELEST) explores why local bakers and bread lovers are gaining interest in stretchy, mochi-filled buns.
Once every two weeks, Ms Wu Li Jie Janice, 20, pays a visit to a local bakery in search of a special kind of bread: bread stuffed with chewy, glistening mochi.
Ms Wu, who runs a bread review account on Instagram under the handle @breaddiaryx has tried mochi bread from multiple different bakeries in Singapore, showcasing her delicious discoveries on her page for hundreds of other mochi bread fans to see.
“Mochis are on the sweet side which complements most breads. Also, breads and mochis are both chewy in texture so I feel [that] they go really well together,” she says.
Ms Wu is one of many bread lovers currently obsessed with mochi bread, a kind of bread in which buns are filled with mochi. Mochi is a type of traditional Japanese rice cake that is made with mochigome rice, a special kind of rice responsible for its gooey, soft texture.
Tearing mochi bunapart reveals a satisfying, stretchy string of sticky, glutinous mochi. This action is affectionately referred to as a ‘mochi pull’ by mochi bread fans. Based on this writer’s observations, the ‘Instagram-worthy’ mochi pull could be a factor contributing to the growing popularity of mochi bread, as mochi pull videos and photos garner hundreds of likes on social media.
With the surge in popularity of mochi breads in Singapore, more and more local bakeries have been adding it to their own menus, including Swee Heng 1989 Classic, MuYoo, Wu Pao Chun and Olsen Bakehouse.
Olsen Bakehouse started selling their popular sesame and chocolate mochi breads around March and April 2021. While they are more well known for their cakes, the business has since diversified to incorporate mochi bread into their menu. Olsen Bakehouse’s founder, Ms Phua Jiamin, 33, says that the bakery’s mochi bread has drawn a new crowd to the business, while older customers revisit to purchase mochi buns along with a few slices of cake.
Home bakers are no exception to this growing trend. Popular home-based bakery, mamafang.sg, specialises in selling artisan steamed mochi buns in the flavours of red bean, matcha and yam. Ms Cassandra Ong, who started selling mochi bread in July 2020, says that the reception to the business’s mochi buns has been positive, with many customers stating that mochi bread was a “novelty product that they [hadn’t] heard of before”.
Ms Ong cites the mochi pull of the buns as one of her customers’ favourite things about the mochi bread, saying: “It sort of created a pulling trend on its own whereby customers tag us on [social media with videos of] their mochi pulls.”
With more people adding these buns into their diet, concerns may arise regarding the health impacts that an overconsumption of mochi bread could cause.
Ms Cheryl Lee, 22, who attained her diploma in Nutrition, Health and Wellness from Singapore Polytechnic in 2019, comments that consumers with medical histories such as Diabetes may be prone to health problems from consuming too much mochi bread as mochi “comes from short grained rice [and] hence [has a] higher glycemic index”, which could cause insulin spikes.
However, consumers can still enjoy mochi bread without worrying about adverse health effects. According to Ms Lee, healthy individuals should “eat in moderation” and “definitely chew slowly as one can easily choke on mochi.”
Despite mochi bread’s current popularity, Ms Wu voices her opinions on whether this trend may fizzle out in the future as more bakeries jump on the bandwagon. “The trend of mochi breads may be replaced by something else and would [be] unlikely [to] sustain its current popularity, since it is no longer a unique and fresh concept to consumers.”
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