Bake Sum
Bakery · Central ·
Asian-influenced pastries, rotating milk buns, danishes
Asian-influenced pastries, rotating milk buns, danishes
"Bake Sum is a Grand Lake bakery with fantastic Asian-influenced pastries. You’re here for the monthly changing milk buns that might be injected with mango or Vietnamese coffee cream, or savory okonomiyaki danishes with a drizzle of Kewpie. The menu changes often, but we’ve never had any misses. It’s takeout-only, so grab a pastry (or more realistically, a few) and head down to the lake for a picnic." - Julia Chen
"After gaining popularity for pandemic pastry boxes stuffed with purple pineapple buns, Bake Sum is opening its first storefront (Berkeley) and bringing those boxed best-sellers to a proper counter and pastry case." - Becky Duffett
"I’ve been enjoying Bake Sum, a new bakery that layers buttery French techniques with fresh Asian flavors, boxing up croissants, mochi bites, and pineapple buns tinted in green matcha, purple ube, and black sesame. The venture is an equal partnership between Joyce Tang and Elaine Lau and is centered around giving people prepackaged boxes of deliciousness every single weekend. Tang—who founded the wholesale bakery Chinoiserie, supplied pastries to places like Boba Guys, Equator Coffee, and the Asian Art Museum, and left tech (Google and Facebook) to train at the San Francisco Cooking School and extern at Celler de Can Roca—brings deep wholesale experience, while Lau trained at the Culinary Institute at Greystone and has baked at Cafe Attila, Manresa, and Nico. The box mixes classic French pastry with Cantonese/Hong Kong–style inspirations: a rotating pineapple-bun play filled with different custards and creams (the ube version has been the most popular), a savory croissant inspired by musubi with layers of spam, seaweed, and a sprinkle of togarashi, and a sweet croissant rolled in sugar that might be filled with yuzu custard and topped with torched meringue. Bake Sum will do wholesale, takeout, and a pinch of delivery (they’ll deliver if you order five boxes); you can preorder online for Friday/Saturday pickups (they’re moving pickups from Bayview to the Mission and to a new location inside Berkeley’s Bread Project), and their pastries will also appear around town at spots like Grand Coffee in the Mission, Magnolia Mini Mart in Oakland, and Red Giant Coffee Roasters in Redwood City." - Becky Duffett
Kayla van K.