Fresh start for the New Year.
I look forward to seeing and reading your posts about bakeries around town.
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My first bakery walk of the New Year.
Emmer is closed for vacation.
BaNoi on Bloor west of Christie Pits
Spam and Egg tart (very good, this was my breakfast)
Curried beef bun
La Boulangerie on Dundas W of Ossington
Ham and Comté sandwich on their baguette, $14.50
Bakery Pompette
2 Crème Caramels @$6.50 each
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The Breadhouse Bakery at the corner of Bayly and West Shore in Pickering is our go to. It’s the least fancy bakery you can imagine and that’s exactly what I like about it. The aroma from the baking in the back mixed with memories of holding my mom’s hand, standing on tiptoe to see the goodies just can’t be beat.
https://thebreadhousebakery.wixsite.com/website
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Just tried Fleur du Jour on St Clair W and really liked their almond croissant. Will have to go back and try their Kouign Amann next time
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The lines are back at Emmer on sunny Sundays. I don’t really wait in lines longer than 3 people.
There was a line of 5 or 6 people at Fika, so I kept walking. I like the Sunshine Buns (a vanilla custard bun) and Kannelbullar (Scandinavian cinnamon cardamom rolls) at Fika.
I got my coffee and morning pastry at Nine Tails’ new location on Spadina. I don’t have that much experience with dorayaki but I liked it. I had the custard filled one yesterday.
Continued on my walk to BaNoi, which was sold out of their apple pie and apple gallette. I purchased their BBQ pork bun and curry beef bun, which are $6 each. They’re substantial, twice as generous as most in town.
I prefer the BBQ pork. Both are good.
I stopped at Coco’s after that, where I picked up a slice of orange Bundt cake and a a slice of Battenburg cake. I had some Battenburg cake last night and it was a good one. These are their IG photos of the same cakes I purchased yesterday, and the product is always consistent in my experience.
Finally, my last stop was Bakery Pompette, where I like to buy Crème Caramel. They had sold out of Crèmes Caramels yesterday, so I purchased a pear frangipane danish, Almond croissant and a personal-sized banana chocolate chip loaf. Photos of the Danish and croissant 
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I tried Bakery Cafe Cuervo y Marquis on Ossington today.
So far, not very good.
I purchased the cinnamon sugar cookies, pecan cookies, a slice of apple strudel and what they call duck tourtière.
Cinnamon sugar cookies. The co-owner told me they were similar to an Empire Biscuit ( I didn’t go pedantic on him, I know my Empire Biscuits 
) with a Latin American twist. Not much cinnamon.
Pecan cookies. Same kind of texture as the cinnamon sugar cookie. Light on sugar, kind of hard. Maybe the butter or margarine isn’t being creamed enough before adding the sugar. They’re certainly edible and the nuts are fresh, but - so many better cookies in this city.
The strudel, which looks promising. I haven’t tried the strudel yet.
The duck tourtière looks more like an empanada with underbaked dough in the middle.
I think these guys are all talk and Instagram, without much substance.
These 4 items came to just under $34.
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Nice potato rolls, Crème Caramel and chocolate pecan caramel cookie from Bakery Pompette yesterday.
It’s Polish Paçzki Day today, and North American Paçzki Day on Tue.
I’m going to pick up Paçzki at Benna’s and or Janchenko’s on my the west side.
Hastings on Queen E has them now .
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As a pre-Valentine’s celebration, we ordered again from Pretty Little Layers, this time the strawberry shortcake in a heart shape. The Greek yoghurt mousse had a distinctive tang that provided counterpoint to the strawberry gelée, strawberry cremeux, and vanilla genoise. Beautiful and light.
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Finally tried the tarte flambée from Patisserie La Cigogne. It’s a thin crust slathered with cream cheese, chopped onions, and lots of fatty bacon. It’s as delicious and rich as you might expect.
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Sorry to be a stickler but I’m frustrated by the difficulty of finding “genuine” Tarte Flambee in Toronto - or ANYWHERE in North America (OK Gabriel Kreuther in New York has it - but The Modern (his former restaurant) has it on the menu - but it ISN’T tarte Flambee).
The base needs to be Creme Fraiche - DEFINITELY NOT Cream Cheese. Not sure what that is - but it’s NOT Tarte Flambee!
Won’t argue about whether it’s delicious!
But I also doubt La Cigogne has the wood-burning oven either!
In Alsace, while the standard/ most popular tarte flambée / flammenküchen choice has Crème Fraiche, onions and bacon, there are other varieties of sauce bases offered.
It looks like when Crème Fraiche is not available, many cooks use sour cream
There are also tarte flambée recipes that use a fromage blanc, so I can see someone using cream cheese, cottage cheese, mizithra or ricotta in place of fromage blanc.
If it tastes good, and it resembles Tarte Flambée in concept, when the ingredients or wood burning oven aren’t going to be available in Toronto, who cares if it’s labeled Tarte Flambée or not?
The 3 Brewers call their flatbreads Flamms. I doubt they use creme fraiche. I haven’t ordered one here, but I have ordered one at a 3 Brewers in Lorraine, about 15 years ago.
I’m aware that tarte flambée typically has crème fraîche or fromage blanc, but I was just going with how they titled the dish and how they listed the ingredients. Having not had fromage blanc, I don’t know how much different it is than cream cheese. They definitely don’t have a wood-burning oven.
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I think it looks great.
I’d order it.
I’ve made a bastardized version at home with regular Gay Lea sour cream, yellow onions, Metzger bacon and no knead pizza dough, in an electric oven.
On the topic of using cream cheese when fromage blanc is hard to find:
Most French and German recipes, as it’s made on both sides of the Moselle River, call for a combination of Crème Fraiche and Fromage Blanc.
Cream cheese could be used as part of the substitution.
This recipe suggests using cottage cheese or ricotta here in Canada. https://ufecanada.org/wp/2021/05/recette-de-la-flammekueche-ou-tarte-flambee-alsacienne/
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Oops. I posted to the old thread.
Very good $3.95 chocolate pecan caramel cookies from Bakery Pompette.
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Candybar cake from Coco’s in Little Italy. Chocolate hazelnut filling.
Very moist. A good layer cake.
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As part of our swing into the west today, we hit a couple of patisseries also. First up was Fleur de Jour on St. Clair. We sampled the almond croissant, which was buttery, flakey, and covered with an almond cream. They had many other tempting viennoiserie, including one covered with candied blood orange.
Closer to our destination was Noctua. We were aiming to try their churro croissant, but alas it wasn’t available. So we went with their caramelized onion, za’atar, and cheese brioche, which was tasty, but would have been better warmed up to remelt the cheese.
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Ahh, they are back. Must get some.
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