2015
The Dough Collective caught my eye last year when it opened its first store on George St. It had a house built from bread rolls gracing its entrance! But I was freshly full from lunch and wasn’t open to the prospect of a mid-afternoon snack, so passed on the longan roll I saw. I did get a nibble of the samples, though, and the longan roll was tasty and nothing like sultana or raisins in bread.
They didn’t have the longan rolls when I visited but they did have chocolate and chestnut rolls. The chocolate is intense in these rolls. After the first bite, I wondered if the brown cream inside that I thought was chestnut purée wasn’t just chocolate cream. But it’s certainly chestnut purée, and it gave a very pleasant nuttiness to the chocolate roll, akin to the deliciousness of hazelnuts and chocolate.
But the pastries! The pastries keep me coming back to The Dough Collective. This is the Apple Turnover ($3.80). The pastry is absolutely delicious – oh so buttery and flaky. The innards are an apple jam, and I didn’t mind that lack of actual apple pieces as it made the pastry melt in your mouth.
After going back multiple times for just the apple turnover, I tried another pastry: the Apricot Danish ($3.80). It’s two slices of apricot and a glob of custard wrapped in pastry and covered in a sticky glaze. The glaze moistens the pastry considerably, so you lose some of the flaky goodness from the apple turnover. Other than that, though, the apricots provide juicy bites to the ends of the pastry, while the custard between the two apricot halves gave a pleasant not-too-sweet surprise.
The Dough Collective really sets itself apart from the myriad of other bakeries around.
Lychees are one of my favourite fruits. I love to eat it in all its forms, which is usually as whole fruit (fresh or canned), or as a flavouring to cakes or drinks (including liqueur). In its rarer forms, I’ve enjoyed it as a dehydrated chip. And now, I’ve also enjoyed it as a dried fruit in bread from the Dough Collective.
Despite appearances and first impressions from the samples, the bread doesn’t have a hard crust or a dry centre. It’s actually a soft bread, with a fluffy inside that’s scattered with a lychees throughout. I’ve never tried dried lychees before (where would one buy them from?) and they taste rather interesting – something like a dried grape (raisins) but with a more exotic more mellow sweetness. With each bite, the generous scattering of lychees flavours the fluffy bread. And even though I’m not the biggest fan (or at all) of multi grain bread generally, I quite enjoyed the grains here – they were only on the surface of the bread and lent a pleasant nuttiness and texture.
2017
These days it’s a little difficult to get into the Easter spirit when supermarkets start selling their hot cross buns the day after Christmas. One way to get my attention, though, is matcha. And at The Dough Collective, you can find classic, chocolate choc chip and matcha red bean hot cross buns. They’re 6 for $6.50 or 1 for $1.80.
Starting off with the Original, The Dough Collective’s version has orange rind and raisins scattered throughout. While the fruit may look a little sparse, it was just enough to bring the citrus and sweet raisin flavour throughout the bite without overwhelming. The bread is tender, but it lacked the ‘classic’ taste of the spiced dough. Usually, the cross on the bun is a highlight for me being chewy and/or crispy, but here it wasn’t noteworthy in the least.
Next up, the Chocolate Choc Chip was packed with chocolate flavour, using a dark chocolate for the dough and melt-in-your-mouth dark chocolate chips throughout to make for a truly decadent chocolate treat. Again, as with all items at The Dough Collective, the bread is beautifully tender.
And finally, the Matcha with soft and sweet red and green bean through not. While the bun was a beautiful green, the matcha flavour doesn’t hit you in the face, and is rather subtle, coming through only at the end of each mouthfeel as a faint vegetal flavour. The sweet beans add pops of sweetness and nutty flavour.
And since I was already there, I try the Matcha Surprise ($1.80) with the same matcha bread but here with a white chocolate filling. The matcha flavour was lacking again although the white chocolate brought a pleasant sweetness in lieu of the sweet beans in the hot cross bun.
So, while the matcha hot cross buns lured me into the store, I’m not too impressed by their offering. The chocolate choco chip hot cross bun was the standout, while the matcha hot cross bun lacked matcha flavour, and the original hot cross bun lacked spice.
The Dough Collective is located at various locations in Sydney.