What is your favorite bread? Is it the tasty bread that anyone can buy from the neighborhood bakery? Or is it the more expensive French bread? Ask any Filipino and they would definitely say “pandesal”. It has been more than two years since I last ate that bite-size salted bread and I could no longer remember its taste. A glimpse of hope occurred in my mind when I heard about the news of the 2016 Taipei International Bread Show. It was an opportunity to rediscover the lost memory of my bread of life.
Nangang Exhibition Center with the elevated railway of the Wenhu Line |
It was a three day event that started on March 11. International and local brands in the industry of bread making were invited to showcase their latest products and technology inside the Nangang Exhibition Hall. The place was very accessible since the Wenhu Line and the Bannan Line of the Taipei Metro were connected to provide easy means of transportation. For people coming outside of Taipei County, they just need to board local trains of the TRA and then alight at the Nangang Station. They then have to transfer to the MRT going to Nangang Exhibition Hall Station.
Tickets to the event costs NTD 200 and overseas visitors can just enter for free. They just need go to the Information Center and a kind lady will assists the visitors in registering for the event. I lived here in Taipei so I should not be classified as an overseas visitor so I paid the NTD 200 ticket. Even though I have the ticket I still went to the Information Center and talked to the lady in English. I was given instantly a registration form, a large ID and a one-day Taipei Metro Pass. I was also asked to sign a logbook. The large ID should be worn to enter the exhibition hall for free. This information was very important since the Taipei government organizes similar events like the Taipei Game Show, Taipei International Auto Show, Computex and many more. I guessed that they follow the same protocol for international visitors every time.
TIBS occupied exhibition Halls I, J, and K and one whole day was actually not enough to see all the displays. The first thing that caught my attention were the empty glass cabinets. “Where did all the bread go?”, I asked myself. I later found out that the space was for a company making glass display cabinets for bakeries. haha!
Amateur and professional bakers should bring large shopping bags since all the items that they need for baking can be found in the exhibition from attractive paper cups for their cupcakes, to the colorful sprinklers up to the utensils needed for baking. There were even kiosks selling books about baking. Name it, TIBS have it!
green bean bread |
red bean bread |
The Taipei International Bread Show would not be complete without free samples of breads. Just raise your hand and squeezed yourself together with the hundreds of Taiwanese who wants to have a taste free samples of pineapple cakes and other delicacies. Have you tasted a green bean bread? It was so delicious. How about eating red beans without the bread? Different kinds of the red filling were given to the visitors by just following a long queue. Cakes oozing with calories were also abundant in the exhibition hall.
Modern machines for making breads were also part of TIBS. I saw a chocolate chip making machine, a packaging machine for tasty bread and other sophisticated equipments. Some of the machines were even proudly made in Taiwan. The TIBS was not just a heaven full of different kinds of bread. It was also a place to start a new business.
An Italian chef makes a pizza for the audience. |
Hot! Fresh from the oven... |
Let us not forget the flour which is the main ingredient in making bread. There was a section where giant packs of flour were displayed alongside the breads that were made up of it. The baker should also not be left out when we walk talk about bread and TIBS have a section for this professionals. A Taiwanese baker have shown his talent in making pineapple cakes while on the other side of the exhibition hall were giant buns that were just freshly baked from the oven and I saw a baker used a flat spade to take the hot bread out of the oven. I was also so lucky to have eaten a free slice of pizza made by an Italian chef. Amateur bakers were also given a chance to show their skills in baking through a contest in which the winner will be sent to Tokyo for an international competition.
The last day of the international bread show ended without seeing any shadow of the my favorite “pandesal”. I was expecting to see different kinds of bread from around the world since the TIBS was an international event. Maybe, I should be the one to introduce the bite-size salted bread to the Taiwanese. I can invest my money to buy those empty glass cabinets and modern equipment to open my own bakery in Taipei. I could even make the Filipino bread have a Taiwanese touch by putting inside a pineapple filling. It will be a foreign bread that they can love and call and as their own. Their bread, our daily bread.
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