First Look: A Former Falco Baker and a Proud Mary Roaster Open Time & Temp in Albion

When Manning Young and Palita Cai launched Time & Temp, their new Albion bakery, they planned a low-key soft opening to test out the equipment. What they didn’t expect was to be run off their feet by pastry-obsessed Brisbanites.

“I didn’t think people would show up,” Young tells Broadsheet. “I thought [we’d be] super conservative with numbers. Then people turned up and we were forced to meet demand – now I don’t feel like there’s a need for a big opening.”

When Broadsheet visits, the roller door is half-shut after another bumper weekend. Technically, it’s only Young and Cai’s third weekend of soft trading, but it certainly hasn’t felt that way. They sold out an hour before close today, with the cardamom buns barely making it past 9am.

It’s no surprise Cai’s cardamom buns have become an early hit. She cut her teeth at Falco – a Melbourne bakery famed for the Scandinavian staple – before moving to Loafer Bread. When she returned home to Brisbane, she worked at Riser Bread.

Her pastry line-up at Time & Temp will always feature a plain croissant, a pain au chocolat made with Hunted & Gathered chocolate, and those cardamom buns. The rest will change depending on what produce is in season. Over the first few weeks, Cai’s produced a savoury corn danish, a maple pecan pie, and a rhubarb crumble danish with vanilla crème diplomat.

“I want to play around with produce I see and try different pastry shapes,” says Cai, who uses Pepe Saya cultured butter and sustainable flour from Wholegrain Milling Co. “The rhubarb danish, for example, I love rhubarb on custard, so that was the idea behind it.”

For coffee, Young – a Proud Mary alum – is focusing on batch brew, rotating through his favourite roasters, including Passport, Fieldwork, Ageyo and, of course, Proud Mary. He’s keeping prices low – between $4 and $6, depending on the beans. For him, it’s about complementing the pastries, rather than building the business around coffee margins.

“It’s very much pastries [first],” he says. “If we can add on a coffee for a couple gold coins for someone to enjoy with their pastry, it makes the whole experience better.”

The compact 45-square-metre space was previously home to sourdough specialist Brewbakers. Young and Cai wanted to make it clear they weren’t offering bread, so stuck a large “Pastries” sign above the shopfront. The rest of the fit-out is pared back, with a timber serving counter, a small retail shelf stocked with coffee beans and Hunted & Gathered chocolate, and a handful of seats outside for soaking up the sun.

Time & Temp
337 Sandgate Road, Albion
No phone

Hours:
Fri to Sun 7am–midday

timeandtemp.com.au
@timeandtemp_