Gunsan bakery with buttery mocha buns: Hongyun Bakery

When I thought of a Gunsan trip, I only ever thought of Iseongdang, but this time I found another bakery that locals say is famous. It’s Hongyun Bakery in Suseong-dong :) It’s quite well known on social media as a great Gunsan bakery, and I heard plenty of locals visit too, so off I went.

What especially intrigued me was that this is a place where a Korean Master Craftsman in baking and a Gunsan City Master personally makes the bread, using local agricultural products such as rice flour, glutinous barley, and Korean wheat. After trying it myself, the signature chewy texture of the rice bread was completely my thing! Hongyun Bakery is truly a local Gunsan bakery favorite.

Hongyun Bakery location and parking

It’s about an 8-minute drive from Eunpa Lake Park and about 10 minutes by car from Gunsan Railroad Village, so it was easy enough to visit by car while traveling around Gunsan!

The sign said they provide 1 hour of parking support, but there were lots of cars parked along the roadside, so we just parked out front and got our order to go :)

A bread-filled shop and open kitchen

When I walked into Hongyun Bakery, there were seriously more kinds of bread than I expected! The lovely smell of baking bread was floating through the air too—instant healing just from the scent..

And the thing that impressed me most was the open kitchen! Right behind the sales area, I could see bread and cakes actually being made. Hongyun Bakery is said to be run by someone selected as both a Korean Master Craftsman in baking and a Gunsan City Master. Seeing them working up close somehow made it feel even more fascinating and cool!

Hongyun Bakery also explained that it does not use imported wheat, instead making bread with local products including rice flour, glutinous barley, and Korean wheat. Rice flour, in particular, is a variety developed to be milled and used straight away without soaking it in water first. If you’re doing a Gunsan bakery tour, I think it would be a lovely stop to add.

Second-floor café space

There are places to sit and eat upstairs, which seemed great for travelers like us to take a break with coffee and bread!

Bread selection and prices

Inside, there was such a wide range: everyday table breads, cream breads, bagels, castella sponge cakes, cakes, and salt bread. This bread lover’s eyes were spinning :)

• Salt bread: ₩2,800
• Salt bagel: ₩3,500
• Sweet potato cream cheese bread: ₩5,500
• Black sesame loaf: ₩6,000
• Angel chiffon: ₩6,000
• Black rice loaf: ₩7,000
• Condensed milk baguette, garlic baguette, pizza baguette

The basil bread, garlic ham tori, and so many others looked absolutely delicious! For a famous bakery in a tourist destination, the prices weren’t high at all—actually, they felt much cheaper than Seoul, and the breads were big too. I genuinely wanted to buy loads!

This place must be heaven,, They even have vegan bread, so I loved that there were so many different options at this local Gunsan bakery favorite.

There were so many kinds of bread that it took us quite a while to make a full lap and choose :)

Besides the baked goods, coffee and other drinks were available at affordable prices too!

We packed up our haul properly!

Taste test: packed mocha bread and cream cheese breads

Brown-rice castella, sweet potato cream cheese bread, blueberry cream cheese bread, and mocha bread!

The first thing we ate as soon as we got it home was the mocha bread, or coffee bun—and this was seriously my number one!!! You have to try it..

I’ve had coffee buns at lots of bakeries, and they can be a little bland, with only a coffee aroma on the outside and nothing much inside. But Hongyun Bakery’s was so chewwwy, with lots of rich, nutty butter inside, which made it even more delicious.. I’m honestly so sad I didn’t buy more.

We had the brown-rice castella, sweet potato cream cheese bread, and blueberry cream cheese bread with milk for breakfast the next day at home. The brown-rice castella had a slightly different texture from ordinary wheat-flour bread and wasn’t sweet, so the adults really liked it!

This is the sweet potato cream cheese bread, and this one was ridiculously good too!!! It was soft but also springy and chewy, so I kept reaching for it. It made me think, ah, this is why people come looking for Gunsan’s master baker!

As you can see in the photo, it was generously topped with sweet potato powder, and the bread itself was large, so just one was quite filling. The sweetness of the sweet potato with cream cheese made it perfect alongside coffee :)

Gunsan has so many famous bakeries, but I recommend Hongyun Bakery too if you love bread! More than anything, I really enjoyed that chewy rice-bread texture after trying it myself, so I want to try other varieties the next time I’m in Gunsan.