Fusion Baking – the Best of Both Worlds?

You might have heard people talking about ‘fusion’ as a new food sensation, writes Andre Erasmus. Fusion, in a few words, is the process or result of joining two or more things together to form a single entity.

Putting hops, barley and water together, for instance, gives you beer, while yeast, flour and a few other ingredients become bread. But that is not the ‘fusion’ we’re talking about here.

No, this ‘fusion’ refers to a blend of styles or types of baking from different regions, producing a novel and appealing baked product. Imagine, therefore, baking a tart but incorporating aspects of a chocolate brownie. This could become a ‘townie’ and would, no doubt, be a hit in urban areas.

But beyond the play on words, baking is ever-evolving and trends are driven by consumer demand. As a result, it is little wonder that fusion finds favor with more adventurous bakers who hope to please their cosmopolitan consumers.

The blend of Asian and western baking traditions is an example of fusion baking which is taking off in countries like Australia, the United States and Canada, where immigrant people from India, China and Japan have set up homes and adapted their traditional styles of cooking to blend with those of their new countries.

Is fusion new? I don’t think so. Many years ago, western countries colonized far-flung continents like Africa and South America and introduced their traditional cooking and baking styles to the indigenous people living there. Baking was first seen by the African people, for example, as impractical and a waste of their energies.

Yet we have moved on since then and ‘fusion’ is now acceptable and almost expected.

In Philadelphia, for instance, the Le Me Toujours restaurant had a problem selling its desserts a few years back. In response, the chef met up with some bakery friends with Philippine-based ideas to ‘fuse’ with his French confections, such as Opera (an almond sponge cake with buttercream and chocolate ganache), crème brûlée and almond tuiles. These are now complemented by the Philippine-inspired Sans Rival (a cashew meringue with layers of coffee buttercream) and the bakery’s signature treat, mango cream pie.

In Taipei, China, croissants made using oriental beauty tea – a white tip oolong tea grown in Taiwan – are snapped up at Gontran Cherrier Bakery Taipei, while in Singapore bakery workshops take participants through the basics of baking, the secrets of Indian spices and how to incorporate Indian flavors into local foods to provide an additional ‘spark and oomph’.

Fusion goes on and on, no matter whether you’re in Africa, Asia, the UK or the United States and, quite simply, it is the result of increased international geographic mobility.

A brief look at the history of bread and cakes shows that it all kicked off with Neolithic cooks, before marching through time, picking up ingredients according to availability, advances in technology, economic conditions, sociocultural influences and evolving tastes.

So, therefore, ‘fusion’ is fun but not new. Enjoy your banoffee cupcake or Indian tea croissant and revel in new taste sensations. It is fun.