Lucky Yu, E17

Or rather, lucky Walthamstow

I don’t normally spend my Saturday mornings queuing along the suburban streets of Walthamstow, but then Lucky Yu bake days aren’t entirely normal.

Hai Lin Leung’s Cantonese-influenced micro-bakery isn’t even there every day, for one thing. Bake days come every two weeks, but only mostly — they have to fit around Leung’s health, personal life, and the small matter of her full-time job as a doctor.

When one of those occasional Saturdays rolls around, the only indication that anything is afoot — queue snaking down the road aside — is a small, hand-painted sign perched against a window frame, and the kitchen window to its side slid open for a make-do service hatch for the two-hour stretch that customers have to collect their orders.

Ordering is its own challenge. Leung saves a spread of buns and small bakes for the counter on the day, but loaves and the bouncy slabs of ginger and spring onion focaccia have to be ordered in advance. Pre-orders open a few days ahead via her Instagram, but I’m afraid this is strictly a ‘notifications on’ job, selling out in minutes. I only managed last week by the grace of the Underground’s ropey 5G network, orders opening the moment I sat down on my train, prompting a slightly stressed flurry of attempts to lock in my loaves through signal that wanted nothing to do with it.

That effort is always rewarded though. Leung has made her name for baking that twists Cantonese ingredients and flavours into formats more familiar to British bakeries. Her sesame soy congee sourdough is the exemplar: a round, sesame-coated sourdough loaf that incorporates soy sauce and rice congee into the dough, in a nod to three of China’s ancient crops. It’s a beautiful sourdough by any measure, coming out a malty brown and just the right side of gummy, though the flavour additions are subtle. That all changes in the toaster, a few minutes under the grill bringing the soy sauce to life like a jolt of lightning to Frankenstein’s monster, umami roaring onto your palate. I want another loaf purely to coat it thick, toasted, with a smear of Marmite — mostly to see if it would hit some sort of savoury overload, a point of no return.

That will have to wait though, as this trip I was distracted by the temptation of the country sourdough tin, a generously proportioned sourdough sandwich loaf with a soft crust and dense crumb. This is the bread I want for my next bacon sandwich, built to be sliced into slightly-too-thick slabs and slathered in butter. I might love it more than the sesame soy congee, marvelling at it both as an avid bread eater and bread baker, as it nails that delicate proportion of wholemeal and rye flours that pack it with flavour without crippling the crumb.

These are loaves to cradle all the way home — two walks and a Tube for me, I imagine an awful lot less for the array of locals and neighbours who have clearly made this a regular habit — but Leung bakes plenty of smaller snacks for the less patient among us. Her light, fluffy pineapple buns need to be pre-ordered, but it’s well worth throwing one in for the timeless combination of sugar and butter, executed as well as any I’ve had in Hong Kong. 

I’m a little less sold on the tomato and egg bun, the inherent sliminess of the original noodle dish translating uncomfortably to the filling for a bun. The Cantonese inflections land better in the ginger and spring onion focaccia, which on a good day towers high, wobbly and fluffy and chewy and crisp, just slick enough with oil to give you an excuse to lick your fingers afterwards.

If anything here should be scarfed on the spot though, it’s the spring onion, fuyu & parmesan bun which, if eaten properly, must be demolished before you ever quite lose sight of Leung’s house. A cinnamon roll reinvented by a madwoman, this sees pillowy dough swirled with a spring onion and fuyu (fermented tofu) bechamel, then topped with cream cheese infused with more fuyu, and sprinkled with parmesan and pepper. I’m convinced that this is one of the single best buns that any bakery in London is putting out right now, home kitchen or not, and each of my Lucky Yu visits has come tinged with regret that I didn’t order at least one more.

My own gluttonous regrets aside, if Lucky Yu has a problem, it’s a welcome one: popularity. On my last visit I rocked up at opening, 10am, and queued for half an hour to collect my carbs. It’s hard to begrudge the sluggish queue itself, because as you near the front the reason becomes clear: Leung and her partner/assistant are always to be found beaming from the other side of their kitchen window, and rarely pass up the excuse for a quick chat as they serve an order, whether they know you or not. Yes, it slows things down, but it’s also what makes micro-bakeries like this unique, and if you’re going to lurk outside someone’s house for pastries then I think you should probably accept that they might want to say hello.

The wait is only half the problem though. Lots of customers mean lots of orders, and there’s only so much Leung’s little kitchen can put out. Counter items are now limited to four per customer, but even so I missed my chance to order this week’s fantastically named (hotpot)ato bun, while the person ahead of me greedily understandably grabbed the last of the bay leaf custard and blackberry numbers I’d been eyeing up. 

The solution, regrettably, is to set my alarm a little earlier, but take mine as a cautionary tale: go often, go early, and always, always, order one more fuyu bun than you think you should.