Live Large. Celebrate Ordinary.
Owner Mr Lai Chee Peng started his career in 1982, taking over his father’s business when he was only 20 years old.
A lone shop remains lit at 3am in the morning along Whampoa Drive, and it is not a 7-Eleven convenience store.
Sackcloth is used to protect the baker’s hands when handling the white hot oven trays.
Sing Hon Loong Bakery is one of the few 24-hour bakeries in Singapore, and one of the last using traditional methods.
Second-generation owner Mr Lai Chee Peng, 58, started his baking career in 1982, at the age of 20, right after finishing his National Service. His father passed away, and suddenly, Mr Lai was thrown into the deep end to continue his family business. He has been a baker ever since.
Baking at Sing Hon Loong is crushingly manual work, divided into two 8-hour shifts - 5am-1pm and 5pm-1am.
His team of 20 bakers would produce more than 500 loaves of bread a day, using more than 400 kg of flour - more on weekends.
There are no written recipes, no daily briefs, and almost zero verbal exchanges between workers, as each baker kneads, cuts, and shapes the dough into bread. At the end of the shift, the bakery would have produced what it needed for the day, almost as if everything came into being through sophisticated AI.
Mr Pan Ah Cheng, 70, deftly delivers precise slits down the middle each piece of french loaf. “Not too deep or too thin, if not the roti won’t open up nicely in the oven.”
Their flawless synchrony shouldn’t come as a surprise - many of his staff have been baking for decades.
Mr Pan Ah Cheng, 70, who started baking as a teenager, has more than half a century of experience at various bakeries.
Even though he lost his middle finger in a motorcycle accident in 2013, Mr Pan continues his work with an acrobatic finesse. Beneath the sailor-like swagger was an obvious sense of pride in his work - every cut is precise, every movement in and out of the oven, razor sharp. He has chosen not to retire, even though he can afford to.
“Must work la! Many of my baker friends retired and after 2 to 3 years, they die!”
Mr Pan Ah Cheng, 70, working on the ovens with acrobatic finesse. He is one of the 20 bakers working day and night shifts to churn out traditional breads at the 24-hour Sing Hon Loong Bakery.
After ending his A.M. shift around lunchtime, Mr Pan would go for his daily mahjong session at Geylang. But the bakery would remain open for 24 hours.
The wheels of the kneading machine are constantly covered in flour throughout the day.
The analog dials and buttons on the 35-year-old ovens give the master bakers leeway to tweak their baking process based on their experience.
“Many taxi-drivers and night-shift workers come between midnight and 4am. The only time of the year we close our doors is during Chinese New Year, when we rest for 5 days.”
There are no price tags on the bread.
When queried, Mr Lai or his assistants will rattle off their exact pricing in one breath, ranging between $1.20 to $2.10. But chances are, the regulars already know the prices.
The crustless white Nanyang-style loaf has been a favourite for generations. And there is the “jiam tao roti”, the Hokkien name for the french baguette, which locals love to pair with chicken curry.
Locals affectionately call the french baguette “jiam tao roti”, translated from Hokkien as “a bread with sharp heads”.
The crustless Nanyang loaf is soft and billowy, and a favourite across generations of Singaporeans.
Slicing bread by hand is a common practice at Sing Hon Loong as it gives a “finer finish” than machine-cut versions.
“We have used the same ovens for the last 35 years. I think this is what makes us different from the newer bakeries… We still slice bread by hand, and even though the slices are uneven, they taste better. We wait for the dough to rise naturally, no quickening or softening agents, no preservatives. It’s been like this since we started, so we stick to the good old way.”
Mr Lai offering evening prayers outside his Whampoa bakery before starting yet another shift.
Sing Hon Loong Bakery is located at 4 Whampoa Drive and open 24 hours a day.