Orapa Bakery

One of the few delights of the Filipino culture is the joy of eating freshly baked bread. “Orapa Bakery”,located at filinvest 2 road, batasan hills Q.C., provides, provides a distinct Filipino yet familiar taste to its customers through its humble and delicious baked goods compared to other bakeshop at their place.

Their store started from their humble abode in 2004, selling a few batches of bread to their neighbours since the next bakeshop would be a long walk and is inconvenient for them as well as for the neighbouring houses. Soon after, aleng Orapa’s bread became popular for their variety of goods and great taste. Even families visiting the area buy their breads or is being used as staple food along with warm and satisfying noodle soup or “pancit canton”.

Aling orapa's bakery early in the morning while kids are playing tayaan in front of thr store.

One of their most famous breads is the ube loaf, torta , Spanish bread with filling and the famous pandesal. Along with their products that runs out almost every day, are ensymada (brioche with butter sugar and topped with grated cheese), putok (bread similar to the appearance of pandesal yet firmer with crown slits on top and galzed with milk and brown sugar.), Granada, pan de coco (bread similar to putok but with pan de coco filling inside). 

From top row, Most left: Torta, crack pandesal, putok, spanish bread with ube filling. upper middle row: pan de sal, putok with milk glaze, pan de coco, spanish bread. Lower middle row: ube loaf, spanish bread with ube filling, putok, spanish bread with ube filling. Bottom row: Pan de sal (ready made)

At first glance you would think that their store has nothing quite special to offer and yet people line up to buy from their store every morning. i then thought of buying a few out of respect since i would be taking pictures of their sari-sari store for our project, but as time went on. I came back for their bread like i was starting to look for it every morning as my first meal of the day. Then did i realize that food may seem plain and boring but could still satisfy you beyond your expectations. 

Based on my observation, the store could definitely be improved if they could explore their bread options and going beyond their natural fillers such as ube, pan de coco and orange sugar/sweetener from which every bakeshop uses. They could also improve their goods by means of technique learning and improving the quality of their product as time goes on, hoping to expand their market and maybe build a bigger store. Going from sari- sari store to convenient store with baked goods sold on the side.

I have also observed the trend of baking malunggay bread which they could also look into since most people nowadays are more concerned with their health than before.  Possibly even create a market within the subdivision along with selling the usual pan de sal inside since it is the closest to our village and most people eat bread in the morning. The store could also improve on selling taho, or chilled taho within the area which i seldom see around especially that our village is located far away from downtown quezon city. 

-ken tomelden