When her home-based bakery was pumping out Macanese egg tarts, red bean flower pastries and baked butter mochi doughnuts to the delight of Palafox Market shoppers earlier this year, Liang Xu was regularly getting to bed around 1 a.m. after a full day Friday devoted to food prepping from scratch.
The Pensacola baker would catch a cat nap and be back in her apartment's kitchen by 5 a.m. Saturday to begin the baking process.
"She never turns it off, she's always looking for a new thing to make or a way to improve the things she already does make," said Xu's husband, Josh Barry, on Friday. "She's constantly changing the recipes. Especially, like, our pineapple cakes. She's changed those 100 different times."
Together, Xu and Barry run the Pretty Bear Bakery, an authentic Chinese and Asian-style pastry and doughnut business that became a staple at Palafox Market for about six months before the market itself was whisked away indefinitely by COVID-19.
That sometimes tedious 24 hours worth of food preparation and baking was well worth each and every compliment received for the Chinese-born Xu, who emigrated to the United States in 2018.
"When people say they enjoy it, that makes me happy," a bubbly Xu said Friday. "It's unique to the area. I think people like that."
It isn't hard for Xu to pinpoint what makes her brand of Asian baking stand out from the crowd.
"The American pastries are way too sweet for me," Xu said. "I can't find the stuff that I loved at home, here. I missed it, I craved it."
Xu couldn't find an alternative to sweet, sugary western-style baking in Pensacola, so she became the alternative. After moving to Pensacola from Chicago in 2019, Xu signed up for virtual Chinese baking classes. Ironically, she never quite knew how to bake in China for the 23 years she called it her home.
"We don't have ovens," she said Friday, with a laugh.
"They don't have a word for oven, really, it doesn't translate," Barry added. "'Oven' translates to toaster oven over there. So her grandparents, they didn't really teach her much, but she grew up around it."
Xu studied shipping management in college and took time off after school to travel, which is around the time she met Barry in a Beijing hostel. The two fell in love and moved to Chicago together in 2018, the city where Barry's family resides.
The cost of living deterred Barry and Xu from Chicago and they came to Pensacola, which wasn't too far from the central Florida area where Barry grew up and became fond of before the time he spent traveling the world.
To get a feel for Xu's tireless work and refusal to cut corners by using store-bought ingredients, her approach to making red bean-based fillings tells quite the tale.
Red-bean fillings anchor more than a few of her menu items.
"I have to soak these for at least eight hours, then cook them for 15 minutes, then make them into paste, which takes about 20 to 40 minutes," Xu said. "That's just the filling alone. And that's for the flower pastry, the yolk pastry, and for the matcha mochi."
"They sell red beans ready to go at Saigon Market," Barry added. "But we've found those to be very sweet."
In the summer of 2019, Xu developed a local network of Asian-born Pensacolian friends through the Chinese-based social media app called WeChat. Those friends quickly doubled as taste-testers, and helped the self-taught Xu enough become confidence enough to apply to be a Palafox Market vendor.
Some of Pensacola's most creative home-based bakers, artists and other vendors have had to wait a year before being approved to sell their goods at Palafox Market, but Pretty Bear Bakery got the good news in October 2019 after about a three-month wait.
"They like to keep things unique," Barry said, based on application feedback they received from the Palafox Market organizers. "If there's six bakers all selling cookies, for examples, it's not likely they'll all be approved. But because she doesn't make any Western-based desserts, they said, 'Alright, we want to fit you in.'"
Xu said Palafox Market became a short-term goal of hers from the first time she visited as a shopper in 2019. Nostalgia wrapped her up and took her back to her traveling days as an early 20-something-year-old.
"I stayed in Australia for a while and they had Sunday markets and arts on the street like that, and I thought, 'This is really cool,'" Xu said. "And then I saw it in Pensacola so I'm just like, 'I want to sell something here, I want to try and sell pastries here."
A fast favorite and current top seller at Pretty Bear is the Macanese egg tart, which consists of a flaky pastry crust and a custard filling underneath a crispy, brûlée'-like top.
The egg-based pastries are so sought after in China that they are sold as desserts at most Kentucky Fried Chicken chain restaurants, which are revered a bit more in Chinese culture than in America.
The egg tarts, made with just a subtle dash of sweetness, are partly responsible for the carryover in regulars Xu has experienced since she began baking strictly from home and doing pickup outside of her apartment building in East Pensacola Heights.
After realizing the pandemic wasn't going anywhere in April, Xu made the most of a bad situation by working even harder.
She branched out to incorporate more Taiwanese and Hawaiian-style baking into her fast-rising repertoire. She likes to point to her pon de ring donuts as a bi-product of that experimentation.
"I started to make them in April, they have Japanese and Hawaiian influence," she said. "It's with tapioca flour and it's really popular, especially among people who have been to Hawaii."
She said business fluctuates, by both customer quantity and order volume, but she's still received plenty of support during the pandemic.
And she's learning more and more about how to maximize her at-home baking business every day.
"On Mother's Day, we did our most orders and made over $500," she said. "I'm trying to learn more about how to bake for each American holiday, figure out the target audiences and what people want."
During the pandemic, Xu spends most of the week food prepping, and then bakes her items fresh each Saturday morning for pickup later that day, which is free of charge.
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The Pretty Bear Bakery's most recent menu, which includes a handful of gluten-free and vegan mochi and doughnut options, also sells coconut cookies by the dozen to go along with her aforementioned cornerstone treats.
Delivery within a five-mile radius is free of charge.
For now, Xu doesn't have starry-eyed visions of opening her own bakery in Pensacola. She said she wouldn't rule it out in the future, but shies away from it right now because she thinks it might take the fun out of her favorite thing in the world.
Fun is what Pretty Bear Bakery was founded on. It's the most salient part of the gig, and it's what inspired Xu to teach herself the craft, seemingly out of the blue, only one year ago.
"Have fun, that's my goal," Xu said. "When you open a store, you have to think so much of the business side. I want to always be able to experiment and have fun."
Pretty Bear is licensed under Florida's Cottage Food Law, which requires bakers to avoid using meat and most perishable ingredients.
New Pretty Bear Bakery weekly menus go up online each weekend, one week in advance of the Saturday pickup window. Order online and stay up-to-speed with the at-home bakery by visiting its website and Facebook page.
Jake Newby can be reached at jnewby@pnj.com or 850-435-8538.
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Pretty Bear Bakery's Asian-style desserts are passion project for Pensacola home baker - Pensacola News Journal
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