{"id":6597,"date":"2025-09-06T02:42:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T02:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/from-tampines-to-toulouse-this-sporean-is-now-a-beloved-baker-in-a-village-in-france\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T02:42:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T02:42:24","slug":"from-tampines-to-toulouse-this-sporean-is-now-a-beloved-baker-in-a-village-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/from-tampines-to-toulouse-this-sporean-is-now-a-beloved-baker-in-a-village-in-france\/","title":{"rendered":"From Tampines to Toulouse: This S’porean is now a beloved baker in a village in France"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

What started as a failed job search for an engineering role in France 23 years ago has turned into an unexpected success story for Singaporean Ewan Irwan – now a beloved baker in a small French village.<\/p>\n

Mr Ewan, 51, first moved to France at 28 with his French wife, hoping to work as an engineer. When he couldn’t find a job in the field, he decided to switch paths, taking on odd jobs to make ends meet while enrolling in a baking course.<\/p>\n

He found work in a bakery in Lyon and, two years later, decided to move to Saint-Robert, a remote village about two hours from Toulouse.<\/p>\n

He took over its only bakery, Le Fournil de Saint-Robert, 18 years ago, settling in with his then-wife Sophie and their young son Kalis, now 19 and training to be a sous chef in France.<\/p>\n

His story came to light when Malaysian media outlet Says posted a TikTok video<\/u><\/span><\/span> of him at work on Sept 1. The clip went viral, attracting more than 562,000 views, 29,000 reactions, and nearly 500 comments.<\/p>\n

The video shows him hard at work, using a traditional wood-fired oven to bake pain de campagne, a classic French country bread. He begins his prep as early as 2.30am – a routine he has kept for the past 18 years.<\/p>\n

\n
PHOTO: EWAN IRWAN <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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When The New Paper reached out, Mr Ewan was surprised, insisting he was just an ordinary person baking bread in France.<\/p>\n

Winning hearts with bread<\/h3>\n

“The people in the village were curious at first to see an Asian face running their bakery,” Mr Ewan told TNP.<\/p>\n

Bread is no small matter in France, he explained.<\/p>\n

“It is a very important thing to the French people, their traditional sourdough bread which I make. It’s ‘patrimont’ – heritage in French, and it is something very sacred. So I have to be very respectful when making it.”<\/p>\n

Eventually, through his generosity and his skill as a baker, he won their hearts of the villagers
<\/span>.
<\/span>“I think I make good bread, which is why they like me,” he said modestly.<\/p>\n

Running the bakery has been demanding – sometimes he sleeps less than four hours a day during the busy summer holiday season. He credits much of the bakery’s success to his ex-wife, calling it a “team effort all these years.”<\/p>\n

\n
\"Singaporean
SCREENGRAB: SAYSDOTCOM\/TIKTOK <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Today, Mr Ewan serves not just the 300-odd residents of Saint-Robert but also customers from surrounding towns – and even Parisians with holiday homes in the area, who stock up on his loaves before returning to the capital.<\/p>\n

“When they know I am going back to Singapore for my annual holiday, they will remind me that I have to come back,” he said.<\/p>\n

The youngest of six siblings, Mr Ewan usually returns to Singapore every February or March for four to five weeks to visit his mother, three brothers, and two sisters
<\/span>.
<\/span>“I’m Malay, and family is very important. While appreciating and respecting the culture of the French, I need to retain my own culture,” said the Tampines native with a chuckl
<\/span>e
<\/span>. “I love Singapore, and in my heart, I’m completely Singaporean, even though I love life in France, too,” he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/sub><\/p>\n

From Tampines to Toulouse: This S’porean is now a beloved baker in a village in France<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What started as a failed job search for an engineering role in France 23 years ago has turned into an unexpected success story for Singaporean Ewan Irwan – now a beloved baker in a small French village. Mr Ewan, 51, first moved to France at 28 with his French wife, hoping to work as an…<\/p>\n

Read More “From Tampines to Toulouse: This S’porean is now a beloved baker in a village in France”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}