House of the rising bun

Fuji Japanese Bakery is quiet, waiting for the onslaught of the after-school crowd demanding doughnuts with red-bean paste and curry buns.

This modest bakery has been on Sydney's north shore since 1984 when Yutaka Miyamoto opened his first shop in Brookvale with just six different pastries.

Family affair ... son and father, Akira and Yutaka Miyamoto.Credit: Quentin Jones

Nearly three decades later, Miyamoto, his wife, Mizue, and son, Akira, run this equally modest shop in Killarney Heights. Their repertoire has expanded to an impressive range of breads, savoury and sweet pastries and the traditional Japanese sweets manju and daifuku.

''We have listened to the customers' voices and there's been a big change in this shop,'' Mizue says. ''After school, small children asked for something savoury. Japanese customers started asking for traditional sweets.''

Traditional Japanese pastries and sweets.Credit: Quentin Jones

They still sell the red-bean, custard, cream and sweet-biscuit buns that featured in the original shop but there are also cream puffs, pastry horns, six kinds of doughnuts, danishes and a fine creme caramel. French bread and baguettes, Japanese-style bread, butter rolls and savoury buns from corn to ham and cheese are here, too, along with Japanese-style meat pies (no gravy), a frankfurter bun and potato croquettes in rolls.

Japanese baking is influenced by French and German traditions.

Bread dough is enriched with egg, butter or milk - and sometimes all three. Bread rolls are glazed with an egg wash.

Savoury flavours are a fusion affair, too. The curry bun has a delicate flavour and texture. Rolls are filled with tonkatsu (crumbed pork), chicken nuggets and even fried noodles, all home-made.

Even the azuki (red-bean paste) is home-made, cooked slowly for 2½ hours with nothing but sugar. Surprisingly, it's not as sweet as you would think.

Filling doughnuts and buns is a skill in its own right. The uncooked dough is filled before frying or baking, not after. Then there are the two types of sweet-biscuit buns. Each of them involves making and proving two different types of doughs, wrapping one around the other, then baking them together.

Miyamoto is passing this baking knowledge on to Akira, 21, who is in the final year of his baking apprenticeship. When he finishes, Akira will be a rarity: an Australian baker trained in Japanese baking.

His father grew up the son of a Kobe baker who had a German-style bakery. Miyamoto came to Sydney in 1982, aged 26, to work in the bakery his father had opened in Northbridge and met Mizue. Together they opened their first Fuji bakery.

In 1996, they opened a second shop in Chatswood and ran it for nearly a decade.

Since then, their wholesale business has grown. They supply three other shops and a few restaurants, and cater for companies such as the Japan Tourist Board and Japan Airlines.

There's no question the shop is still the mainstay of their business. You can see it as the kids push through the door looking for that after-school snack, Japanese-style.

FUJI JAPANESE BAKERY

Shop 5, 1-15 Tramore Place, Killarney Heights. 9975 1095.

Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm; Sat, 8am-6pm.

Best buys

Red bean doughnut $2.60/140g.

Curry bun $2.60/110g.

Japanese-style white bread $4.20/750g.