Macedonian Pilot Opens Yugoslavian Bakery With His Wife, Offers Unique European Pastries

Macedonian ‘Name Day’
The pastries and desserts that Mitre and Katerina offer are what you’d get to enjoy if you visit a Macedonian home on a special occasion. North Macedonia, a successor state of Yugoslavia, observes Name Day, a Christian tradition where people with religiously significant names are given their own day of celebration. Yep, kinda like a second birthday.

According to Mitre, one usually celebrates Name Day with a lively house gathering. “We call our friends and family — there could be 30 to 50 people coming and going throughout the day,” he explains.
 

A brief history of Yugoslavia
Although the couple hails from Macedonia, Mitre says he added Yugoslavia to his bakery’s name as his pastries are from “all over Yugoslavia [including] Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia.”

Formerly a communist country ruled by president Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia was made up of Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (comprising Serbia and Montenegro). After Tito died in 1980, the republics gradually broke off to form their own independent countries, and Yugoslavia was dissolved in 2006 when Serbia and Montenegro became the last to leave.

Due to Serbia and Macedonia being ruled by the Ottoman Empire — now modern-day Turkey — it’s also common to find Turkish dishes in Yugoslavian cuisine. At their bakeries, Mitre and Katerina serve house-made baklava, the well-loved delicate dessert made with layers of phyllo dough, chopped nuts and rich sugar syrup.
 

Macedonian shop owners
Mitre has a day job as a commercial pilot for Singapore Airlines’ Boeing 777 plane. The Singapore PR moved here 17 years ago from his native Macedonia for a pretty interesting reason. Then a cadet pilot, he finished his training and secured a job with the national airline just when Yugoslavia was dissolved as a country. He later found a job flying for SilkAir, Singapore Airlines’ defunct regional subsidiary before moving to his current post.

Meanwhile, Katerina is an economics graduate from the University of Macedonia. “But she told me she didn’t want to work in an office. Her passion was baking, so we decided to open a bakery,” says Mitre, who helps his wife at their cafe whenever he’s not flying. For 8days.sg’s photoshoot, Katerina also dons a titovka, a small hat popularised by the Yugoslav People's Army. 
 

The look
We visit Yugoslavia Bakery’s more accessible dine-in cafe at Citylink mall to check out its bakes. Like its Katong V sister outlet, the rustic 22-seat shop has a faux brick wall adorned with a photo of President Tito presiding over unfussy wooden tables and chairs. Mitre gestures at the other blank photo frames on the wall. “I’m going to put photos of Macedonia there,” he shares. The space is a tad more hipster than the no-frills cafes we have been to in former Yugoslavian republic Croatia, but still exudes a chill homely vibe.

Choose your own pastries
What we find charming and endearingly Singaporean here is the cafe’s heartland bakery self-service concept for its pastries, which are mostly vegetarian-friendly. Katerina and her kitchen team display a vast selection of almost 20 types of pastries and sweets daily, and customers just have to grab a wooden tray and tongs, pick their haul and pay at the cashier counter.

It’s worth noting that Yugoslavian pastries are not super soft and fluffy like Asian bakes. “Most of the people in Singapore, they make soft bread with different fillings,” Mitre points out. His pastries mostly follow a traditionally denser European style, which Mitre and Katerina spent a year experimenting with locally-sourced flour and milk to get their hometown taste.

Burek-making

Mitre says he plans to eventually open five branches islandwide, including a central kitchen that can supply all his outlets. “Katong V was a test market. It’s a short walk from our home,” he tells us. He also hopes to get enough manpower quota to hire a Serbian baker, who can in turn teach his Singaporean staff to make authentic burek.

On his phone, Mitre shows us a video of the Serb rapidly stretching and tossing the large, flimsy burek dough sheet. It’s a process that reminds us of intense prata-flipping on steroids. “Takes a lot of work. I can make 30 pies in a day, he can make 15 in an hour,” Mitre notes. When he hires more staff, he also wants to make “family-sized roasts for sandwiches and salads.”

Burek Pie, $4.90 a slice
There are two types of burek here: a pie version, and a puffy swirl. Each pie has a savoury filling — there are three types offered here like feta cheese, feta and spinach, and beef. The pie is also loaded with diced potatoes, all wrapped in crispy house-made yufka, a type of Turkish flatbread that’s similar to phyllo dough but a bit denser.

It feels like our birthday when Mitre trots out a whole freshly-baked golden burek that smells amazing (you can place an advance order with the bakery if you want the entire pie, which yields eight slices). It’s our first time eating burek, but we find it surprisingly underwhelming despite its appetising appearance.

While the pie crust is moreishly crackly, the yufka, which tastes like plain dough, is too dry for our Asian palate. The mildly-flavoured potatoes within are cooked on the harder side rather than soft like curry puff kentang. We also can’t taste much of the feta, spinach or beef.

That said, we suspect that we are too used to madly buttery pies with a creamy filling, like Tai Cheong’s Hong Kong-style chicken pie. If you’re expecting that kind of pie, you won’t find it here. But what you get is a respectably rustic slice of Balkan burek that you don’t have to fly to Europe to try. We recommend ordering a milky cup of Balkan Coffee ($4) to go with this. The aromatic, robust brew perks up even the most anaemic of pastries.

Burek Swirl, $7.50
While we are not fond of pie burek, we adore its swirly cousin. When it’s served as a puffy disc almost the size of our face instead of being pressed flat, the yufka becomes a comforting thing to gnaw on. It’s especially good as a dessert pastry with a decadent dark chocolate filling sprinkled with toasted hazelnuts. The caramelised apple version with cinnamon raisins is also a winner.

Kifla, $2 (8 Days Pick!)
These doughy ‘caterpillars’ are called kifla, a traditional Yugoslavian milk bun. It’s usually shaped like a shio pan crescent, but Katerina’s kifla boasts a cuter, fancier shape. There are three flavours available, all good: Hazelnut Chocolate, Apple & Cinnamon Raisin, and Chicken Ham & Cheddar. Like the shio pan, the kifla has a hard-ish crust which gives way to softer, milky bread. The chunky sausage-like roll is also dangerously easy to wolf down — we can see ourselves chomping down on at least two in a sitting.

Pogacha, $2.10 (8 Days Pick!)
Pogacha sounds like a Pokémon, but it’s really a round Balkan pastry similar in taste and texture to a cinnamon roll. That said, we urge you to get them in all the flavours available, ’cos it’s very yummy, especially the Caramel with Walnuts, Hazelnuts & Raisins, Fresh Raspberry & Cream Cheese, Chocolate, and the original Cinnamon.

Vasa’s Cake, $8.10 (8 Days Pick!)
Vasa’s Cake is a popular dessert and birthday cake throughout Yugoslavia. It’s said to be named after a Serbian merchant, who sold his possessions to get his pregnant wife the best medical care and had a homemade cake made in his honour by his grateful mother-in-law.

The cake comes with three layers, a walnut sponge base, creamy dark chocolate mousse sprinkled with chopped walnuts and a meringue crown with bits of candied orange peel. The light cake base goes well with the velvety choc mousse, which is topped off with a wispy kiss of fluffy meringue and piquant peels. Delish.

Bajadera, $7.90 for three

Bajadera is widely considered to be one of Croatia’s most famous exports. Created by Croatian confectionery giant Kraš, it’s a nutty praline sandwiched with crushed biscuits and chocolate. Yugoslavian Bakery’s petite bar uses sultry dark chocolate, though we still find the candy tooth-achingly sweet with a dense stickiness. Not our favourite sweet. 

Baklava, $10 for four, $15 for six (8 Days Pick!)

The baklava at Yugoslavian Bakery is one of the better ones we have tried. The airy, crispy sheets of phyllo dough crackles and ooze syrup and earthy chopped hazelnuts with each bite. Although it’s also a very sweet dessert, we didn’t find it too jelak to finish.

Orašnice, $5 for two 

A traditional Bosnian cookie, orašnice is made with just three ingredients: walnuts, egg whites and sugar. Which explains its slight airy chewiness akin to nougat, which we don’t fancy much. Still, it has an old-school flavour that should appeal to folks who like nougatty sweets. 

Yogurt, $3.50 for 250ml cup, $6.80 for 500ml bottle

Mitre and Katerina are very proud of their house-made yogurt, which they say goes well with their bureks. The fermented milk is smooth enough to swig like a milkshake, though we find it too sour to enjoy on its own. It would go well with granola, though. 

Address and opening hours 

Address: #B1-14 Citylink Mall, 1 Raffles Link, S039393. 

Opening hours: Open daily 9am-9pm

www.yugoslavia-bakery-cafe.business.site 

Photos: Alvin Teo