For this week's TL;DR we're talking about a very serious issue that affects so many foreigners that come here to Korea.
It's a very sensitive topic, one that hurts the hearts of many of us here.
I would say that it affects us on, like a daily basis.
Today
We're going to talk about the state of Korean bakeries.
*WAAA*
SHHHHH, it's okay
Everyone, put your hand in the healing circle together.
We can do this
If you're from Europe
I think this might be hitting you the hardest, actually
Maybe, if you are a foreigner from other Asian countries
maybe it does not hit you
as hard as it hits us
But I miss bread daily.
I think about bread
Daily.
How many times have you had a hankering for a sandwich
and went down to the local bakery to buy one
just to realize that the bread is made out of this sugary, gluey cake dough?
and you get really upset, SHHH, I KNOW,
it's happened to us all, its okay, SHH
We're healing together
How many of you have traveled to a bakery in a far distant area just to spend eight dollars on a quarter loaf of home-made bread
BUT IT WAS WORTH IT!
AND YOU'D DO IT AGAIN!!!!
YOU WOULD DO IT AGAIN!!!
Yes, bread.
Something I really, really took for granted when living in Canada.
I
NEVER expected to miss a particular style of bread
SO much
because I think
the bread that we're used to growing up with
We've taken it for granted that it's the same all over the world
You think that it's the gold standard while in other parts of the world
Bread is very different.
Yeah, Korea especially
Even the basic bread in Canada, like, the Wonder Bread that might be like 99 cents
You'd be like, "OHO, I wouldn't eat THAT kind of a crappy bread."
NOW I WILL!
You can send it to me
I will eat that bread
I miss European bakeries
I miss six bread rolls for 3 dollars
I miss the smell of butter in bakeries
So this isn't to say that bakeries don't exist in Korea
Very many of them do
It's just that they're more catered for Korean palettes
Than what we're used to in bakeries
Sometimes you hear foreigners say things like,
Korea doesn't KNOW how to make bread
or
They don't know what they're doing
They can't make pastries
I don't agree with that
They just don't make YOUR style
Your style, exactly
In fact, there are a lot of Korean baked goods that I think are absolutely fantastic
But they're just made differently than I'm used to
Like for example, there's a lot of rice flour happening in Korea
So a lot of the loaves of bread that you'll get here are made out of rice flour
So they'll be a lot stickier and a lot sweeter
And not really what you would wanna use for a sandwich
Or the stuffings might be more natural
Like for example,
There would be red bean or like chestnuts
Sweet potatoes, pumpkins
Lot of sesame seeds, that kinda stuff
So
It's good
But it's not what I'm used to when I want, let's say
an eclair, or something could be really bad for the growth of my butt....
And the plain loaves of bread themselves
Those are probably the biggest difference that we see
They might have a couple different types of bread
Every one you buy, even if it says like "12 grain"
It's like 12 grains of sugar!
More like a cake-dough than it is, like, a vehicle for a savory sandwich
We sometimes feel pretty duped because we'll walk into a bakery and you'll see on the wall that they have like
SOURDOUGHS, and RYES, and BAGUETTES and whatnot
And you go up to the cashier like, "I WANT ONE OF THOSE!"
And they're like, "Oh, no, those are just the 3D display models that we have
We don't actually sell that kind of bread
Here, why don't you have this sweet donut instead?"
Oh, it's so...
WHY DO YOU ADVERTISE YOURSELF LIKE SOMETHING THAT YOU'RE NOT?!?!
Don't do that to me!
It's really mean!
It's rude!
It's mean!
It's horrible!
HEY, why don't you come into my hockey shop where you can buy hockey goods,
And here's a basketball.
Now, I would say bakeries have become REALLY popular in Korea now
especially there are a lot of chains like
Paris Baguette or, as Simon says, Tous Les Jours!
And like, Paris Croissant, there are a lot of different places
You see lots of things that say French words and then they try to make you feel like it's a French bakery when it's really not French at all
In fact, even when we went on the Eat Your Kimchi Road Trip
And we drove up to like this tiny little town to try to find groceries
There was nothing above two stories
But there was a Paris Baguette.
In this TINY LITTLE TOWN
And I was like, "Mmkay, they're everywhere now."
In 2011, there were supposedly over THREE THOUSAND Paris Baguettes
And FOURTEEN HUNDRED Tous Les Jours.
JUST those two brands alone
equate to roughly one bakery for every 11,000 people in Korea.
And I'm not sure if this means a lot to you
But think about it this way:
Do you feel as if there are a lot of Starbucks everywhere?
Well, in 2014, there were just over 12,000 Starbucks in the U.S.
OR roughly 1 Starbucks for every 27,000 people, which means that in Korea
There are twice as many bakeries as there are Starbucks in the U.S.
Really?
This is math, yes, so if you feel like, oh my God there's Starbucks everywhere!
This is math!
This is math, so there are so many bakeries out there
This is why I didn't follow you! You were like,
"Numbers, numbers, numbers," and then you said, "This is math!"
And I was like, in my head thinking of, um, sourdough bread...
I'm just trying to show you how big bakeries are in Korea as opposed to Starbucks elsewhere
Now, the only that I'm going to say that's kind of sad about this is that, um,
The Paris Baguettes
If you go into some of them, you might see
Behind the glass, it looks like people are baking things freshly
In fact, that is not true
They're all made in a factory and then they're sent over to the shop
And then the shop either defrosts them
Yeah, but nobody actually makes the dough or kneads the dough
It's just all just one factory, ppt, ppt, ppt
It's kind of like, if you go to like a McDonalds
You order it, and somebody will make your burger on a grill
But they're not actually making the meat patty
They're kind of assembling it according to what's happening
When I've gone to a Paris Baguette or Tous Les Jour, I've never actually had anything that I thought was exceptional
I've never been like, "Wow, this is amazing!"
Or really good, there's not really like an artisan feeling to anything there.
Which is why we find it really funny whenever you hear about a K-pop idol that's opening up a bakery
Like for example, Eunhyuk from Super Junior opened up a Tous Les Jour for his mom or something along those lines
And we're all like, "Uhh..."
And we're like, we know that this is just like a franchise
That he put his name to
His mom isn't back there covered in flour
And kneading the dough and putting love into some of it
It's just they bought it and it's kind of like if you were to buy your own Starbucks
We've gotten a lot of comments and emails from people being like,
"Can you go to Eunhyuk's bakery? It's called Tous Les Jours!"
And I'm like, "Been there
A milllllion times!"
Once you've been to one of them, you've been to all of them!
Yeah, I've even seen some blog posts dedicated to people who traveled to Korea
And went there especially because the actual place has pictures of him too
So they're doing a really smart job of being like,
"Oh, this is HIS mom's bakery!"
But it is NOT,
And they talked about the menu items like the one they talked about, the strawberry smoothie
Because strawberry is his favorite
IT'S AT EVERY ONE!!!
It's similar also with the Twosome cafe
So it's like, Teddy up the street he has his own Twosome cafe
It' the exact same as Siwon's Twosome cafe!
The same Twosome, just with different celebrities on it
There's nothing real sincere about it just plaster your name on it
You're just some model for it
So the reason why we're talking about these franchise bakeries
Is because it's actually creating a problem for the small businesses in Korea
So the Korean Baking School opened in 1972
And it's kind of like vocational school for people to learn to be
Chefs, or like master bakers, or you know, that kind of thing where you're
Master baker...
Master bakers.
You said it, not me!
Master...bakers...
I'm a professional master baker!
What's your profession?
I master bake all day!
Oh my gosh, that's AMAZING!
How have I never thought of this before?
It's like in Downton Abbey! The guy's name is Master Bates!
OH YEAH!!!
I FORGOT ABOUT HIM!!!
Bates, it's Master Bates!
I'm an adult!
I can focus!
The point is,
This baking school is in danger of closing down now because
When it comes to the franchises taking over all the little tiny shops
People that run it don't actually have to be bakers
They just have to be figureheads that put things into the
People that can push the right buttons
So we have a pretty sad stat to back this up
Supposedly, in the year 2000, there were 17,000 self-owned bakeries.
In 2005, it dropped down to 15,000.
And in 2011, that number dropped down to 5,000.
So you can see that the major franchises are really pushing out the smaller shops
And there's not a lot of diversity in the baking anymore.
Five thousand. That's it.
Seventeen thousand to five thousand all in the span of, what, eleven years.
Now that doesn't mean that small bakeries don't exist anymore
There are a handful of small ones that we love that we go to in order to get our bread hankering
If you wanna know what those are if you're living in Korea,
make sure to click on the link here and we'll tell you our secrets.
Hopefully they'll still be there by the time you guys...you know?
I know, there's a good chance they might be overrun.
Go there, support them.
There's at least two or three of them in Hongdae themselves
So our question for you guys this week is: What is bakery culture like in your home country?
Do you feel that loss of bread when you go to different countries?
Or do you find that Korean bakeries have similar things that you're used to?
If you are living in Korea...
Tell us your stories. Of sadness.
So I remember when we were in Sweden, we were speaking with people that actually didn't like North American style bread
Because they said it was too loose and fluffy
So everyone has their own interpretation of what a proper bread is like.
Yeah, when we were in Sweden and Norway,
They had really dense...blukerbrat!
Snukerbrat...!
Brat...snuker!
Definitely had a lot of k's in it.
And it was like, really, I could murder someone and then eat the evidence!
For last week's TL;DR, we did a big ol' talk on my EDS
And I realized, in horror, RIGHT NOW, that I was wearing the same shirt.
What you don't know is that Martina hasn't actually changed for the past week
Nor has she bathed.
That's not true!
It's been exactly a week!
You see me, so fresh and so clean, I changed my outfit.
You wear this shirt in EVERY VIDEO, you don't realize it
DID I WEAR THIS LAST WEEK LIKE ONE BUM ON CAMERA RIGHT HERE?
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE WEARING SOMETHING DIFFERENT!
No, you did not wear the same shirt last week.
LOOK, MY HAIR'S DIFFERENT!
Proof that this was a different day and time and my makeup is different...
The whole point is that we want to thank you for all the comments that you left in the comment section
All of your support and sharing your stories about the invisible illnesses that you go through.
I think, when you read the comment section, you realize that people suffer from a lot more things then you realize.
So many different things people are going through.
So I'm really happy that we could kind of stick together and
I wanted to just scream at the comment section all the time like, "WE CAN DO IT!!! FIGHTING!!!"
On our website, though, we got a really interesting comment from BEITHSAILLE!!! Who wound up saying that
"Why are there no braces that are designed to look funky?"
Like rock-a-billy or with bows or whatnot
Why is it that the majority of the braces are like
Drab, sad colors?
I don't know, and I like how they're like, "Here's a blue brace, it'll blend into your..."
Your WHAT?! What is this going to blend into?!
There is a definitely needed market for fancy-pants orthopedics, and we should definitely start making those.
Steampunk, man.
But the thing is you can't have anything 3D because if you fall or hurt yourself it'll punch into you
So it's gotta be like, fake printed steampunk
I want like a robot leg!
Like, it's NOT a robot leg, but it LOOKS LIKE a robot leg.
Let's make it happen.