Meet the baker — Chef May Ann Amista
May Ann grew up in a mountain village in Mindanao, knowing hunger. That beginning shapes the joy she takes in feeding people — nothing makes her happier than watching someone bite into her bread and light up. And that same sentiment carries into everything in her bakery — the bread she bakes, the way she treats the people she works with, and the people she sees enjoying her work.
Her training began close to home, at the Pastry Arts Academy in Davao, under her mentor the late Dan Basilio — who encouraged her to go further and advised her right up until his passing. From there she went on to the Academy of Pastry & Culinary Arts in Manila, in master classes under MOF baker Sébastien Chevallier, master chocolatier Christophe Morel and viennoiserie specialist Johan Martin. Here she is as head pastry chef at Epilogue — a fine-dining restaurant at Conrad Manila led by chef Hiroyuki Meno, former executive chef of a one-Michelin-star Paul Bocuse restaurant in Tokyo — before leaving to make her own dream, Brioche Bakery, come true.
Today everything is shaped by hand and given the time it needs — from German sourdough and pretzels to French pastry and baguettes: joyfully made artisan bread, honest bread how it was meant to be.
