Ginny Roces-de Guzman infuses the local bread with ingredients like sweet potato, turmeric, charcoal and even purple yam and fresh moringa leaves
Dressed in a printed sleeveless top and loose white pants, Ginny Roces-De Guzman recalls how, as a young girl, she was taught by her grandmother how to make ensaymada.
She remembers rolling pieces of dough on pork fat and forming them into little swirls that resembled snails.
“For me, it was like playing,” says Ginny, who went on to own a popular chain of cake shops called Sugarhouse.
That feeling of play continues at Tilde, located in Makati’s busy Poblacion area, where she puts special emphasis on ingredients, discovery and experimentation.
Originally a restaurant named Tilde Hand Craft Café, Ginny decided to close the dine-in area during the Covid-19 lockdown, though patrons can still purchase frozen foods, cakes and special breads such as Babka, hot cross buns and cinnamon rolls for takeaway at Tilde Bakery and Kitchen in the same location.
Ginny’s other bestsellers include her champorado cookies, inspired by the Filipino comfort dish made of rice and cocoa, and her variations on pandesal that she infuses with ingredients like kamote, turmeric, charcoal and even ube (purple yam) and fresh moringa leaves. Adding significant amounts of the latter two give her pandesal its compact consistency and distinct color and flavor.
Purists may find her ingredients unorthodox, but Ginny says she is simply following the lead of other bread-makers and is continually making new discoveries – both from Tilde’s kitchen staff who used to work for traditional Filipino bakeries and from foreigners she meets in the Philippines.
Recently, Ginny even learned how to make strudel dough from a German baker.
“Bread is really flour, yeast, water and time,” Ginny says. “Different cultures have different bread offerings – in South America, for example, they introduce root crops and indigenous starches into their bread to give it a different texture. We tend to think of kamoteng kahoy (cassava) as poor man’s food, or ube as halaya or cake, but in bread, they are so beautiful.” G/F EWC Building, 5417 Matilde St, Poblacion, Makati City, +63 2 8771 2764; fb.com/tildebakery
