When we went shopping in an indoor mall in Japan, the fantastic aroma of baked bread and inviting sugary sweetness pulled me in… The first thing I saw was a cute yellow storefront with a name of my mother (and my mother-in-law)’s favorite movie, “Mamma Mia!” I of course had to check it out. It was right next to a bakery Antique, and then I saw that the same staffs were working at both shops. We quickly figured out “Mamma Mia!” is a part of Antique bakery.
They are located inside Mallage, on the first floor right by the escalator. Quite a brilliant location if you ask me. We didn’t even know this bakery existed here until we got to the escalator to go up to the second floor.
The Heart Bread Antique had a nice selection of baked goods, both savory and sweets. I love the scent of freshly baked bread… It just warms my heart!
I wanted to try them all, but that will not be a good idea for my tummy or my health…it is always difficult to choose when you are presented with such wonderful selection of delicious looking items. And if some of them look especially adorable, that makes it even more difficult…
At this bakery, the most popular or well known item is called Magical Choco Ring, and they looked like a huge donuts made with croissant-type dough. It had chocolate chips and also have chocolate kneaded inside the dough. It was a huge bread, I mean, really huge. We didn’t get to try it, since we had something else in our mind.
So, what did we try? Well, we saw these delectable cream puffs, and I have a serious weak spot for cream puffs… They are sold at Mamma Mia! and called Mamma Choux. They had three kinds of choux, and had a three choux set (550 yen), which is what we got so that we can taste them all.
After we put in an order, a staff started to fill the choux with cream, one at a time. Yes, the cream is filled at the time or order! How awesome! I love freshly filled choux… And their photo of the choux looked way too good, so I was so excited for them!
The first one was Plain Choux, made with French danish dough, filled with custard cream. It had a dusting of powdered sugar on top. They had a choice in the filling cream, so instead of regular custard cream, we got chocolate cream.
The choux was shaped kind of like a doughnut, with indentation in the middle, but not quite making them the doughnut shape. With that, the cream don’t get filled all the way, and unlike the photo that they had, it was not filled with crazy amount of cream, which was a bit sad… It was tasty though, the dough was airy and light and cream was velvety and smooth. Sweet but not overly sweet, very comforting but yet elegant
The second one was Granulated Sugar Almond Choux. It had bits of almond all over, on the top and in the dough. We got this one with their custard cream.
It was again not filled like their photo… But, it was still very tasty. The bits of almond and granulated sugar gave a nice crunchy texture. The dough was airy and custard cream was tasty, just wished if it was filled with much more cream.
The third one was a seasonal one, called Seasonal Maple Choux. It has a streusel topping, with maple incorporated in the dough.
The streusel topping was nice, which is a crumbly topping of flour, butter, and sugar. But, I didn’t really taste maple. The dough from all three choux had very similar flavor, not that much differentiation. The cream filling was the same, not so much of it in the choux…
Another thing we got was their Salt Bread (77 yen). It is a soft, buttery bread with rock salt on top. It was a small and fluffy bread, tasty and a good little snack.
Even though it was not everything I wanted them to be, but it was still tasty and we enjoyed them all. The staffs were very nice, polite and helpful. With all of their other cute and tasty looking offerings, I am sure I will go back again the next time we go back to Japan. I would love to try their popular Magical Choco Ring and find out what the magic is all about!
Heart Bread Antique – 2-3 Oyamadai, Kashiwa-city, Chiba, Japan