Goh Jia Jun: Behind the Bread at Tiong Bahru Bakery

A good bakery is built on repetition.

The croissant that impressed someone yesterday has to be just as good tomorrow. The loaf coming out of the oven at noon needs to meet the same standard as the one baked first thing in the morning.

For Goh Jia Jun, that consistency sits at the centre of his work.

Goh is a Retail Head Baker at Tiong Bahru Bakery, one of Singapore's most recognisable names for French-style bread, viennoiserie and pastry.

It is a role that places him behind something customers experience every day but rarely think about:

the discipline required to make good bread over and over again.

From SHATEC Into Professional Baking

Goh's professional background includes training at SHATEC – The International Hotel & Tourism School in Singapore.

From there, his career led him into professional baking and eventually into a senior role at Tiong Bahru Bakery.

The title of Retail Head Baker is important.

A professional bakery is not simply a collection of recipes.

Dough changes with temperature.

Fermentation takes time.

Butter needs to behave properly during lamination.

Proofing cannot simply be rushed because the shop is getting busy.

Baking requires an unusual combination of precision and experience.

The ingredients may be familiar.

Getting them to behave consistently is the difficult part.

Inside Tiong Bahru Bakery

Tiong Bahru Bakery has become a familiar part of Singapore's bakery landscape.

The brand began in Tiong Bahru and grew well beyond its original neighbourhood, bringing its croissants, breads and pastries to locations across the island.

As that operation grows, so does the challenge behind it.

A small bakery can revolve around one baker watching every batch.

A larger bakery business needs systems, standards and people capable of maintaining them across considerably more production.

That is where senior bakers become especially important.

For Goh, the job is not simply connected to making bread.

It is connected to maintaining the baking standards behind a brand customers already know.

Croissants Do Not Care How Famous the Bakery Is

Tiong Bahru Bakery's reputation may bring people through the door.

The dough still has to work.

That is one of the peculiar things about baking.

A successful brand cannot convince a croissant to laminate properly.

A popular shop cannot persuade bread to ferment faster.

The technical work remains.

Behind every display counter filled with pastries is a production process that has to happen correctly before the customer ever arrives.

Mixing.

Resting.

Folding.

Proofing.

Baking.

Cooling.

Then starting again.

For professional bakers such as Goh Jia Jun, this is where much of the real work lives.

The Baker Behind the Bakery

Customers tend to remember bakery brands.

They remember the shop.

They remember the croissant they always order.

They remember the bread they take home.

The individual bakers responsible for producing those things are considerably easier to overlook.

Goh Jia Jun represents the other side of that experience.

He is part of the professional baking team responsible for turning the name Tiong Bahru Bakery into something physical every day.

Bread.

Pastry.

Viennoiserie.

Batch after batch.

Goh Jia Jun Keeps the Standard in the Oven

There is nothing particularly theatrical about consistency.

That is probably why it is so easy to underestimate.

Anyone can produce one good bake.

A professional bakery has to produce the next one.

And the one after that.

For Goh Jia Jun, working as a Retail Head Baker at Tiong Bahru Bakery places him inside that continuous cycle.

The customer sees the finished pastry.

The baker sees everything that had to happen before it reached the counter.

And in a bakery, that difference is almost the entire job.