Raymond Tan’s mum was shocked when he told her he was giving up his corporate accounting job to teach baking full-time. “My mum was like, ‘who’s gonna go to your class?’” he tells Broadsheet. She and 50 others showed up to the first one.

Since then, the “ boyish baker from Selangor ” has taught workshops in New York and London, and caught the attention of Moma and Vogue for his couture creations, which reference everything from his Malaysian roots to pop culture and the fashion world.

Though he could still make a killing from those workshops, Tan no longer teaches – he’s too busy running Raya and the Hot-Listed Dua, two of Melbourne’s most innovative bakeries. The former happened by accident: Tan tried to exit the corporate world in 2019 with a wedding cake workshop in the CBD, but the plan was snuffed out by Covid. Instead, he turned the space into a bakery with a typical Tan twist. “I had to quickly tap into what I wanted to bake, so I automatically leaned into my culture with Malaysian and Southeast Asian flavours,” he says. “It wasn’t a totally new [concept]. But no one had a whole shop of it back then.”

Last month, Tan opened Raya’s “Scandinasian” sibling Dua (Malay for “two”) in Melbourne’s Collingwood Yards precinct. Dua expands Tan’s original vision with influences gleaned from his travels through Scandinavia. When he visited Stockholm, Tan was struck by the city’s famous princess cake, a Scandi torte of airy sponge, pastry cream and jam wrapped in green marzipan. Here it’s made with a pandan trifecta of infused chiffon, pastry cream and marzipan.

Tan’s shops are leading a new wave of Aussie bakeries fusing East and West with thrilling results. Take the triple ube doughnuts and Filipino banh mi at Pecks Road in Melbourne CBD, or the Basque cheesecakes spiked with Thai milk tea at Khanom House in Chippendale, Sydney.

While Tan and others continue to break new ground, they’re not the first ones to hold a shovel. Dua’s bread-forward concept was inspired by Breadtop, the East-meets-West bakery chain founded in 2002 by brothers Simon and Kenneth Ip, who opened their first store in Melbourne’s Chinese enclave of Box Hill. Like Tan, the brothers took their cue from elsewhere: Singapore’s Bread Talk, itself a facsimile of the countless self-serve bakery chains across Asia.

Indeed, many of the overarching bakery cultures found in Asia are products of western influence and local innovation. When the British ruled Hong Kong in the early 19th century, they introduced baking traditions that would eventually inspire the pineapple buns and egg tarts found in our favourite Australian-Chinese bakeries. Likewise, French colonisation exposed Vietnam to baguettes and pâté. Voila: the banh mi was born. Post-war migration brought Vietnamese bakeries to Australian suburbs from the late 1970s, and we’ve been shaking off crumbs ever since.

Since the pandemic, Asian bakery and dessert chains have flourished in Australian cities, serving everything from Hokkaido cheesecakes to Korean shio pan. But the level of innovation we’ve seen in the independent space these last few years feels like a continuation of the work pioneering bakeries like Luxbite and Black Star Pastry started back in the 2000s.

At the newly opened Nos Bakehouse in Dutton Park, Brisbane, owner and pastry chef Susan Koh specialises in Japanese shokupan, deployed in bento boxes and sandos filled with Korean beef bulgogi and more. Her desserts follow a similar fusion line, with European desserts such as sponge cake infused with ceremonial-grade matcha from Kyoto.

“When I started working in Australia, I learnt about the Aussie desserts: carrot cakes, brownies, mud cakes,” says Koh, who’s even developed a vegan shokupan to meet the dietary demands of her local clientele. “I only learnt about gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan desserts when I moved here. [They are] not very popular in Asian countries but very popular here.”

She says the pandemic has been instrumental in businesses like hers gaining traction. “A lot of Aussies have been travelling, especially to Japan and Korea, so they’re more open-minded to Asian foods,” she says.

In Kyneton, a town in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges with a population of roughly 8000 people, Cambodian brothers Chan and Ryan Khun marry the humble meat pie with classic Southeast Asian dishes at Country Cob Bakery. In the pie warmer there (and at two more locations in Springvale and Boronia) you might find pies with fillings such as Singaporean chilli crab, Thai beef or Cambodian fish amok.

“When I first came to Australia, I worked for a factory,” said Ryan in an appearance on season 14 of Masterchef. “Every lunchtime, the food truck would come in and everyone would line up for pie. Everyone loved it so much. But on the first day I had the pie, I felt different[ly],” he says. “It wasn’t the best.”

Since the Khun brothers started competing in 2017, Country Cob Bakery has been crowned Australia’s Best Pie maker four times by the Baking Association of Australia. That’s on top of accolades for “classic” Aussie bakery items including Victoria’s Best Fruit Tart and runner-up for Australia’s Best Vanilla Slice.

In Sydney, a scene of patisseries including Moon Phase, Tenacious Bakehouse, Pantry Story, Crescent Croissanterie and Buttercrumbs are remixing French viennoiseries with broad Asian influences.

At Moon Phase in Crows Nest, Korean baker Frances Song tops laminated pastry with kimchi, gruyere, mozzarella, parmesan and nori shards for her signature Kimcheese. Lately she’s been inspired by yum cha: her Prawn Crunch is a riff on prawn toast, while the Char Siu King is a barbeque pork-filled croissant shaped like a Cantonese pineapple bun.

“Prawn toast and pork buns are both beloved comfort foods. The challenge is transforming them into something that complements French pastry techniques while preserving the flavours,” says Janice Zhu, the bakery’s head of marketing and branding.

A small suburban bakery even having its own marketing manager speaks volumes about the viral potential some of these creations have. Foodie members of Asian communities trawl Xiaohongshu (Rednote), Tiktok and Instagram for the next treat worth queuing for. And indeed, it could be at Moon Phase. The bakery pairs Loewe-esque branding with hyper stylised photographs of its latest creations, which resemble coveted outfits in a high-end fashion magazine.

“We wanted to elevate our brand to reflect the artistry and the craftsmanship behind our pastries,” says Zhu. “We draw inspiration from high fashion editorials and haute couture ads because, like fashion, baking can be seen as a creative and aesthetic process.”

When Elly Kim’s “dirty” chocolate croissant made the rounds on social media in 2023, it didn’t just put her Crows Nest patisserie Crescent on the pastry map. It pushed her to be more creative once she realised there was a market for the kind of souped-up creations that have long dominated her native South Korea’s dessert culture for years. “As people become more adventurous with their tastes, there will be more opportunities to reinterpret classic pastries in modern ways,” she says. “With the diverse backgrounds of people in Australia, I think we’ll see a lot of exciting new flavours emerging.”

Likewise, Tan’s design background has cemented strong branding and online identities for both Dua and Raya, and he’ll often use social media to test new products. But he says there are downsides to the hype some of his creations have generated online. “The social media foodies can be very critical sometimes. It can be quite stressful for a new business, because you never know how it’s going to be received.”

Tan is used to the barbs – but if those critics want to nail him for not being authentic, they’re wasting their time. “It doesn’t really bother me if it’s Asian enough or European enough. It’s so blurred. Sometimes I’ll use Asian dough and people will say, ‘Well, this is just bread’. But I know how I’ve done it.”

Additional reporting by Dan Cunningham.