Loffi's Fluffy Pillow Bread offers the best sourdough bread and oozing lava bag. – Picture provided by Loffi Follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our Telegram channel to get the latest updates.

Follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our Telegram channel to get the latest updates.

Kuala Lumpur, November 11-Spinach, mango and cream cheese. Matcha, white chocolate and raisins. Organic pumpkin, cranberry and sesame.

If these sound like ingredients in a smoothie recipe or a granola bowl, then you won't be the first person to think so.

But if I tell you these ingredients have more to do with those crusty sourdough bread and the oozing salted egg lava bāos that everyone was baking when the pandemic first hit last year, any decent dim sum restaurant On the menu?

Enter Loffi, a professional bakery in Sri Petaling, specializing in making fluffy pillow packs...made from sourdough. If this is not enough, since the founder Jacky Cheng is passionate about organic baked goods, there is an organic element in the program.

The 32-year-old entrepreneur had worn many hats before entering the baking industry. Majored in AI (Artificial Intelligence) programming. He previously ran his own badminton academy, the badminton club of the Malaysia Purple League and various sports marketing activities.

So how does this sports fan make sourdough pillow buns? Cheng recalled: “At the end of 2018, I had the opportunity to visit an organic bakery factory. Their passion for using only organic and natural ingredients in their products left a deep impression on me.”

When the owner of the bakery decided to return to Taiwan, Zheng Yue was eager to try and took over the shop with a friend as a co-investor. In 2020, he changed the name of the bakery to Yookybites, and then created an affiliate brand-Loffi-positioned as a catering (food and beverage) lifestyle retail store.

One of Loffi's iconic products is Nasi Lemak Sourdough Pillow Bun. Malaysian flavor dominates here, Zheng explained: “This is a delicious bread. We use coconut oil, so the aroma of the dough is similar to the Santan in our nasi lemak. The filling is sambal paste, coconut flakes and A mixture of soy pine; peanuts and chili flakes on top."

Another delicious bread is mushroom teriyaki, a scarlet dough made with red yeast. The filling uses organic shiitake mushrooms with teriyaki sauce, and the crispy mushroom topping makes every bite a bit crunchy.

If the taste looks unusual and creative, you may be surprised to find that the original recipe is quite simple. Cheng said: "This idea comes from a very popular project in China, pillow buns. We researched this concept and made it healthier by using organic and natural ingredients. In fact, the name Loffi is a combination of sourdough and fluffy!"

According to Cheng, Loffi's guidelines for producing new products include advocating a healthy lifestyle and creating more plant-based products. Check the ingredients for quality control; they also need to be free of chemicals and artificial colors.

He added: “Sourdough is the healthiest bread and is easy to digest. We decided to change the original pillow bread dough from basic sweet dough to sweet and sour dough. We did not add any yeast in the recipe, but used fermented wheat as a Yeast starter."

Loffi's best-selling sourdough pillow bread is probably their Belgian dark chocolate, topped with lemon glaze. Cheng shared, "The selling point is the'lava' filling; we use 65% of dark chocolate imported from Belgium. We added some sour lemon toppings to match the sweetness so that it doesn't feel so greasy."

Another Belgian import-wild blueberries-is the main ingredient of their blueberry cheese sourdough pillow bread. The salty cheese forms a good contrast with the sweet and sour berries.

For a less intense cheese taste, Loffi also made their own cream cheese in-house for their mango cream cheese sourdough pillow bread. The spinach dough is stuffed with cream cheese and mango puree, topped with walnuts and more cream cheese.

Customer satisfaction and the best taste experience are the other two areas Cheng focuses on. He explained: “Have you ever eaten something and hope the filling will pop in your mouth, but it doesn’t? For Loffi, our filling to dough ratio is 4:3. Therefore, the bursting lava filling is Our selling point for sourdough pillow bread."

These properties can be clearly found in their favorite Japanese matcha raisin sourdough pillow bread. Matcha powder imported from Japan is mixed with white chocolate to make lava filling. Add black raisins to increase the taste.

Japanese influence continues to exist in their purple rice red bean buns, which paired Taiwan imported purple rice with organic red beans and organic unrefined brown sugar. Their pumpkin cranberry bread is also organic; made from organic pumpkin, sour cranberries and sesame seeds.

If the breadth of their products seems to make Loffi a veteran in the bakery field, people may be surprised to learn that it started only half a year ago. To be precise, it is six months, which is April 19, 2021.

As Cheng observed, the date is important: "Just two weeks later, due to the surge in Covid-19 cases, we had to face lockdown again. Frankly speaking, it was a difficult time for us because we Looking forward to customers coming and eating. Our sales have dropped very severely."

Like many catering companies, Loffi had to switch to delivery services to survive. Cheng did not waste this slower period; it was a good time for them to fine-tune operations, obtain important customer feedback, and improve labor cost control.

Looking to the future, Loffi will continue their research and development (research and development). Cheng shared: "We will focus on creating more plant-based products. We will also open second and third branches soon."

It sounds like more fusion flavors and soft food will appear in front of us. With these sourdough pillow packs, who says we can’t have the best of both worlds?

21, Jalan Radin Bagus, Bandar Sri Petaling, KL.

IG: instagram.com/loffi.bun/

© 2021, Malay Mail, all rights reserved.