A SELF-TAUGHT local baker has changed the bread-eating habits of many people in Singapore and, in the process, built a booming business that is set to expand abroad.

In a country where people were mostly used to eating sweet, soft bread, Ms Yeap Cheng Guat decided to buck the trend.

In 1997, she opened a little Western-style bakery shop called Bakery Depot in Siglap that sold relatively hard, crusty bread. This included such novelties as mixed-grain loaves, pesto damper and sourdough bread.

Ms Yeap, now 45, had a Master of Finance degree and nearly 12 years in the corporate world.

She left all that behind and, with some help from an Italian acquaintance, taught herself to bake bread. She then opened her Siglap shop.

Initially, her customers were sceptical. Some, including foreigners, popped into her new shop hoping to find a trained foreign baker.

'I'll always remember my first shop. Ours was an open concept bakery and I was the chief baker,' Ms Yeap told The Straits Times.

'They would ask, 'Which one is the real baker? We want to talk to the real baker.' They were disappointed to see a Chinese woman baking and cooking.

'Then they would ask me, 'Which country did you train in?' And I said, 'I am very sorry to disappoint you, but I trained in my own kitchen. But I tell you what, the test is in the pudding!''

Ms Yeap had joined hands with a silent partner, a family member, to start Bakery Depot with an initial capital outlay of $300,000.

Since then, she has added the distinctive brand name Cedele - a rough contraction of the name she uses, Cheng, and delicatessen.

Today, her Cedele by The Bakery Depot chain has 14 outlets. The Cedele brand has become so familiar in Singapore that the chain uses it for most of its outlets.

The latest outlet opened recently in Raffles City Shopping Centre. Another will open in Tanglin Mall next month, and a 16th outlet at Tanglin Post Office in July.

But growth came slowly at first. Her second outlet at Republic Plaza was opened eight years ago, adding sandwiches and, later, soup to the menu. It was a success, so others followed.

An outlet at Wheelock Place, opened two years ago, featured an expanded menu to suit cosmopolitan customers.

For instance, she decided to cater to the rising number of Indian expatriates by offering a range of curries at the outlet.

Ms Yeap jokes that she sometimes spends so much time talking to customers that she has little time left for her work. 'But I enjoy it,' she said

'I have this customer who is diabetic and he couldn't eat his birthday cake, so I made him a carrot walnut cake without sugar. I used apple juice instead.'

To cater to customers who are allergic to wheat, she also learnt to work with grains such as spelt, a grain related to wheat, quinoa, a South American grain, and millet, all of which are either low in gluten or gluten-free.

'We never had any positioning for ourselves. We just knew we made sugar-free bread, fat-free bread. But today, as we move on and we understand our business better, we want to advocate eating well.'

All Cedele goods now use organic unrefined sugar, for instance.

Ms Yeap enjoys baking, though she has left behind her days as chief baker to focus on running and expanding the business.

She was chief baker for more than five years, clocking up crazy hours to ensure fresh loaves were ready for the morning rush. She still starts work at 5am and runs the central kitchen, which moved in June last year to a 7,000 sq ft site in Kaki Bukit from a 1,500 sq ft one in Frankel Avenue.

Ms Yeap is very hands-on - a boon for the business but not necessarily for the staff.

The self-professed 'control freak' has mellowed in recent years, but she acknowledges that it is no easy task working under her. 'I call the outlets every day but that's something I have to let go,' she said.

She demands absolute discipline from staff, or they are out. She admits that she has fired a number of her staff and likes to hire people with no experience so she can train them from scratch.

An Italian colleague in the United States taught Ms Yeap to bake crusty bread. She worked part time in the US during her college days. In exchange, she taught the Italian how to make spring rolls.

Apart from her interest in baking, it was her wish to save money that motivated her to learn how to make Western-style bread. 'One bag of flour can make so much bread,' says Ms Yeap. 'I am very frugal. I count every penny and never spend outside my budget.'

Fortunately for her, she has lots to count these days, though she is far from resting on her laurels.

Last year, Cedele pulled in a full-year revenue of more than $10 million, up from nearly $8 million the year before.

'For us, Cedele as a group is always changing with the times. The brand will stay, but the shop will never look the same.'

But rental is a huge cost that the firm has to consider at all times, she said.

The Cedele store at Great World City, which has closed temporarily for renovations, will be expanded. The Wheelock Place outlet will also expand to the space next to it by next month.

'It's a struggle, you cannot build a shop to last a long time,' says Ms Yeap.

Acknowledging the limits of the small Singapore market, she says the firm is already doing research and talking to potential partners in the region to take Cedele overseas soon.