Ferment Boulangerie — Restaurant in Perak

When I found out about this boulangerie in Ipoh, I was surprised that this exists here. I bet not many locals know the meaning of boulangerie, which in French it’s translated into “bakery”.

This is one of my favourite place to be for it’s ambience and coffee. If you’re looking for a good sourdough in Ipoh, this is your place too! You can find different types of French breads here with different kinds of sourdough too - my personal favourite is the fig & pecan sourdough and their focaccia. Besides bread, there’s also a variety of brunch menu options, some slice cake - which kinda average in my opinion. I also like their beverage menu which has seasonal coffee concoction at times. They also offer homemade kombucha - after all it is what’s they are called - “Ferment”. There’s also some homemade artisan butter which is rare in Ipoh, my personal favourite is the truffle butter. Overall, I do find some menu items tend to overpriced but I also find their sourdough/bread prices are rather affordable. Before some of you disagree, sourdough recipes are hard to master and they take time to learn/make. :)

I’ve personally recommended some friends here after my first visit. Ever since, many of my local friends are surprised too that such boulangerie existed in Ipoh. Then I heard from someone that this and the well known Pâtisserie in Ipoh is actually from the same owner. Either if it’s true or not I can’t be sure, and today I found out another cafe which specialise in coffee is too their “sister company”. I must say, the person behind these establishments are pretty clever :) although among these three, Ferment is my favourite to-date :D

In my last visit, I saw some new boutique products were available to sell over their racks. If I could recommend (and the owner reading this), there’s this Denmark brand which I thought of after visiting here and it would just look so nice on those racks. — FRAMA. I understand it can be risky for such niche product to be place and sell in Ipoh, but it would look so nice in this little boulangerie :))

Another recommendation, if it’s possible to get rid of those card stamps and create membership base system, it would be awesome for the complimentary sourdough :D keep up the good work!

P/S, kudos to your friendly...

The vibe is good. Plenty of sour dough behind the counter. They’ve got variety of butter for the sour dough and cakes at the counter.

First of all, there’re not much options in the menu, it’s mainly a high tea place where you can see from the picture, those seats aren’t comfortable enough for you to sit for more than an hour unless you have 10 years story to tell. Secondly, the assorted sourdough we ordered have 6 pieces as it mentioned on the menu and the price is RM14, then you have to choose a butter for it, so we got the truffle butter which is RM6. When it served to us, it shocked us a bit, it really was just 6 pieces of it, only 3 slices of the sourdough. I mean they really did tricked me with word as I thought it would be 6 ‘slices’ instead it was 6 ‘pieces’ lol. What on earth this sourdough is so special? The sourdough was not really outstanding as I found its crust was too hard to bite, truffle butter was great though. Thirdly, the peanut butter jelly cake was quite impressive, love the crunchiness of the chopped nuts with the cream. Lastly, I think the only thing which is good is the cake, the sourdough was way too pricey and not sure what is it so stand out to be so expensive compare to the other places, not worth eating , if you really want to give it a try, don’t choose the assorted sourdough, maybe you can get something like smashed avocado which probably just RM23+. The atmosphere was good but I don’t want to be seated in this hard and uncomfortable way, so I probably won’t be...

The place is exquisitely designed with plenty of natural light. Ceiling to floor window and giant doors. Very instagrammable place. BUT it bothers me that I can’t get proper complete coffee menu here. They don’t have an espresso machine. They can only do pour over black coffee.

I totally agree with the other comments that their sourdough is overpriced and nothing to shout about. It is really hard to bite and i’d probably end up hurting my mouth by the time I’m done with the entire 6 assorted pieces. They should do something about it. My usual place is RAN cafe in Klang and Bread Bar in KL for sourdough breads. Maybe they can try and compare with theirs. No harm.

The basic butter given with the bread. Don’t even get me started. For that overpriced bread, the least you can do is provide adequate butter. If you want to eat all 6 pieces properly, you definitely need to order additional butter choices. It’s simply not enough. The chairs, omg. For such high class, fine exquisite design and prices on menu that comes with it, for god sake line up proper seatings please. The chairs are not comfortable.

Attitude wise, the staffs were okay and respectful. I wouldn’t say very friendly. The vibe wasn’t there where one is cheerful and enjoys one’s work. You can see from my video how they place the bread tray on your table. Fine...