Milky Transformations:

The moods of dough

At half past seven in the morning, we walk into Baocong Ranch Pastry Shop beside the Taiwan High Speed Rail viaduct. The soft scent of milk ripples through the air. Behind the counter, second-­generation owner Huang Jiaqun is warmly greeting customers. In the kitchen his mother, Xu Baogui, the mastermind of the shop, is busy making her signature milky steamed buns.

Xu recalls that years ago, she and her home economics classmates enrolled in a beginners’ baking course just to escape their family duties for a while.

“To make things that involve fermentation, we’re subject to the moods of our dough.” Temperature, humidity, and the flour’s capacity for water ­absorption all affect the outcome. The slightest miscalculation can ruin an entire batch of buns. “Sometimes the buns look perfectly shaped in the steam cabinet, but as soon as we open the door, they collapse,” Xu says with a smile. Back in the day, she and her classmates were on tenterhooks when they opened the steamers.

Huang Baocong (right) and his brother Huang Chunmu (left) ran a dairy farm together for more than 30 years. (courtesy of Baocong Ranch Pastry Shop)

Though their farm closed for good when the land was acquired by the government, Xu Baogui and her husband, Huang Baocong, continue to maintain the legacy of the family’s half-century dairy business through the pastry shop.

No food coloring is used for these freshly steamed purple yam buns, which preserve the authentic flavors of their natural ingredients. 

The moment the steamer is opened, vapor fills the kitchen, and we find out whether the batch of nearly 100 buns has successfully risen. 

Baocong Ranch Pastry Shop insists on using only fresh milk rather than water in their confections, giving the products a naturally rich milky fragrance.

Pure fresh milk

“No dilution. No additives. Pure natural flavors.” These are Baocong Ranch Pastry Shop’s promises. Fresh milk is delivered daily from a nearby farm. The unhomogenized milk retains its natural cream and soft grassy scent.

The family of Xu’s husband, Huang Baocong, began to run a dairy farm in the 1970s. Huang and his brother subsequently took over the business. In their heyday they had 230 cows, producing 3,000 liters of fresh milk a day. In 2006 the Council of Agriculture (now the Ministry of Agriculture) recognized the excellent quality of their milk and awarded them five Plum Blossoms, the highest honor for local dairy farmers.

These fresh milk cheese sticks are very popular with children.

Baocong Ranch Pastry Shop uses Tainung No. 57 sweet potatoes—a variety known for its golden flesh—to make these popular delicacies, wrapping unpeeled sweet potatoes in milky pastry. They’re crisp and flaky outside, but velvety inside.

From farm to pastry shop

Xu set up the pastry shop with a view to making use of surplus milk in winter, rather than having to sell it to corporates at low prices. She attended the local Tian Mama workshops held under the aegis of the Council of Agriculture for people committed to using local produce in the food industry. In those days, however, the area was sparsely populated, and the neighbors weren’t used to having egg pancakes and fresh milk for breakfast, so business was slow. It wasn’t until 2008, when the Chinese contaminated milk scandal drew public attention to the safety of dairy products, that business at Xu’s shop started to pick up. As its reputation spread, there were even customers placing orders from Hong Kong.

Ten years ago, with private land being expropriated for the development of Taoyuan Aerotropolis, Huang’s family farm closed for good, but the pastry shop remained. Now managed by the second generation, the shop has seen innovative changes in packaging and marketing strategies, as well as launching popular products such as fresh milk cheese sticks.

Apart from steamed buns and bread made with milk dough, customers love the shop’s pumpkin, brown sugar, and purple yam buns. The pastry-wrapped sweet potatoes—crisp and flaky outside, but velvety inside—are also bestsellers. The ingredients all come from local smallholders. The shop ingeniously transforms misshapen, unwanted produce such as purple yams and sweet potatoes into delicious confections. In rejecting additives and insisting on low sugar, the owners want to pamper their customers while giving them peace of mind.

Baocong Ranch Pastry Shop is not only a labor of love for Xu Baogui, but also a repository of the Huang family’s memories of half a century of dairy farming. Located on the fringes of a bustling city, the shop remains faithful to its origins by hand-crafting its products with pure fresh milk. 

Now run by the younger generation, Baocong Ranch Pastry Shop is a shared enterprise for the whole family. Huang Jiaqun (second from right), Huang Baocong’s and Xu Baogui’s youngest son, plays a key managerial role.