I am Tommy Lee.
I make bread in Kuala Lumpur.
Tommy Lee is the founder of Tommy Le Baker.
He was trained in French boulangerie, after first studying patisserie. His early years in the baking industry included working as a regional key account manager, supplying bread improvers and ingredients across commercial bakeries.
This experience exposed him to how modern bread is shaped — not only by flour and fermentation, but by systems designed for control, speed, and consistency.
He left that environment, choosing instead to work in a way that allows bread to remain variable, responsive, and alive.
Before everything else, there was a small corner off Jalan Ipoh — where bread was first made without the need to conform to expectation.
Today, his work moves in a different direction.
He bakes without additives, and works with a small team in a setup that allows variation, adjustment, and time to remain part of the process.
1) “I’ve seen both sides of bread.
The one that is controlled, standardised, and made to behave.
And the one that doesn’t always listen.
I choose the second.
Not because it is better.
But because it is more honest.”
2) “I don’t chase consistency.
I understand why it exists.
It makes business easier.
It reduces risk.
But it also removes something.
The variation.
The adjustment.
The need to pay attention.
In my bakery, the bread can change slightly from day to day.
That is not a mistake.
That is the work.”
3) “I don’t believe in pushing the dough too far.
A lot of modern baking relies on heavy mixing, correction, and additives to hold everything together.
I’ve done that before.
Now I try to do less.
Less mixing. Less forcing.
Let the dough come together over time.
When you don’t create so much tension, you don’t need to fix so many problems later.”
4) “Not everyone likes my bread.
Some find it too dense. Too hard. Too different.
I understand that.
We all grow up eating differently.
Texture is something we are trained into.
I don’t try to change that.
I just make the bread the way I believe it should be.”
5) “I don’t run the bakery the way I used to.
There is a team now.
They are building their own understanding of the dough.
My role is not to control them,
but to create the space for them to learn from the work itself.
Bread teaches, if you let it.”
6) “I didn’t set out to prove anything with this bakery.
I just stayed with it long enough to understand what I don’t want to do anymore.
This is what remains.”