84 Lorensz Road, Colombo 4
Last updated by indi on 28 August 2012
Paan Paan is a new bread shop off Duplication Road. They make good bread. If that seems like a simple review, it is, but finding decent bread in Colombo is surprisingly hard.
Roast paan or kade paan, which you get from any streetside shop, is the gold standard. This cheap bread is almost uniformly delicious, such that they serve a variation at the high end Ministry Of Crab. The middle and upper classes of bread, however, are largely non-existent. You can't find a good baguette or European style loaf. While a few places have understood that this type of bread is more expensive, they haven't understood that it should also be good. BreadTalk is perhaps the worst offender, a Singaporean chain producing over-priced mediocrity.
Paan Paan is different. They make some pretty decent bread. We had a friend pick up some bread and muffins so we don't know much about the Lorenz Road store, but we know what the food tastes like.
whereabouts duplication road?
Thanks for the tip, must try it out.
Let me let you in on a little secret behind roast paan and traditional kade paan. The secret ingredient is the oil in which the bread pans are coated.
They use coconut oil which gives off a delicious aroma and imparts a nice taste to the bread. The only problem is that the bread must be eaten fresh.
The oil tends to turn rancid so the bread does not keep well, so best consumed within a couple of hours of baking.
We need to get zoom working on that map. It's on Lorensz Road, so go down Duplication past Dickman's then turn up (left) at the Hindu College turn. It's past Hindu College, just before Layard's Road.
CHB sounds delish. I'll be there when next in Colombo, you have made me a very happy girl.
Also not all kade bread is the same. Some bakeries try to get away with a lower standard by using more coconut oil, which means that it goes off faster.
Royal Bakery in Welawatte and Torrington Bakery in Thimbirigasaya used to do excellent bread.
Another type of loaf you should try is Jungle Bread, so called because it keeps and was a staple on my grandfather's trips. Perera & Sons still do it, but only to order. You can place an order at the Thurston Road outlet.
If you have not tried it before, do so, even if only for the completeness of your research. It is delicious.
Paan Paan is fantastic - thanks for highlighting it. A long loaf - wholemeal? - was a little lacking in taste but the big rounded bloomer-style multigrain loaf is the best bread I have found in Colombo. It is so fresh and good that it can still be comfortably eaten as bread - rather than toast - after a couple of days. I agree that the orange & poppyseed and blueberry muffins are good; when I was in there yesterday they also produced a batch of multi-grain, possibly bran, muffins straight from the oven which were excellent and less sweet. I have yet to try the chocolate muffins or the ciabatta/foccacia or various other breads on display. Go there. (By the way, if you are looking for white, oily, crusty bread, Torrington Bakery, which Jack mentions, is good - it's on Thimbirigasyaya Road near Thimb. junction.)
Bread is made using wheat flour. We import billion of dollars of wheat of the US and make bread and eat. What's the big deal??? We are a rice eating nation. We should not be eating bread. Bread is also not good for your health. Normal wheat based bread has high glycemic index, meaning it is high in sugar and you can get diabetes and also cholesterol (sugar turned to cholesterol). Wheat bread also has gluten, which is also bad for you health. If you are a Sri Lankan and eat bread, you should be ashamed of yourself. Importing wheat from the US and making bread and eating here, making the US rich when we have millions of tons of rice wasted is a crime.
Manik, your comments remind me of a minister - was it Wimal Weerawansa - who said bread makers and wheat importers in Sri Lanka were "terrorists" (sic). On the evidence of my 3+ years here, you are also a wheat-eating nation. What nation on earth does not import some of its foodstuffs? Live and let live. Sure, wheat products may not be the healthiest, but then, are coconut products? If we all ate only 100% healthy foods then we might live longer but dietary and food choice would become very dreary. You saying "you should be ashamed of yourself" is just silly.
Ha ha ha….!! That was refreshingly hilarious Manik p.
17 August 2012
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My mum has a trick where she puts roast paan in Ziploc bags and freezes them. You can then microwave and they taste fine. Interesting point about the oil though. Paan does tend to not preserve well beyond a day, tho the freezer trick does seem to work.