Harbord Bakery

Bakery: Harbord Bakery
Address: 115 Harbord St, Toronto, ON
Website: http://www.harbordbakery.ca/
Style: Jewish
Price: $$

I've been waiting to try these guys since trying a stale bun from good ol' Pusateri's and knowing it had plenty of promise (and highly suspecting that the bakery might have more poppy seed goodies ;D). It's not really on the way to anything, so I just decided to make the walk up from Kensington Market late Saturday afternoon and was a little disappointed to find that, with the cold and the time and effort, the bakery was totally cleaned out, although I was a little pleased with myself that I had correctly identified the Pusateri's bun as having a Jewish-style poppy seed filling (yup, poppy seed is indeed an obsession). Asking about the poppy seed ring on the back shelf ($7.99), I was SO going to take it until the worker inspected it closer and informed me it was in fact chocolate. Noooooooooo~! ;____; Sadly, there was nothing else with poppy seeds in it (the characteristic Challah bread, honey cake and whatever else people rave about weren't in sight...), so I had to *sobs pathetically* settle for something else...

Looking back, the poppy seed ring would have been a great choice at a reasonable price since the three small things ended up totalling more and I don't necessarily think there was more for sharing/sampling. Anyways~ poppy seed tragedies out of the way, I took two goodies for the guinea pig brothers: a sweet bun with plum jam ($2.50) in the same style as the poppy seed bun, but just with... plum jam. :P A dense dough baked a little too hard, filled with more than a dollop of plum jam and then topped with icing and some crumble, I believe. (I made 5 pics of this thing and 4 came out completely blurry -____-) Brother #1 liked it; well, he said it was "good", although it could also have been fresher.

Brother #2 ended up with the almond bun ($2.50) which was the same dough folded over a strange almond mass and then topped off with more slivered almonds. At first, we thought the filling was just marzipan, but he said it wasn't... but "whatever it was, it was good". Why can no one ever help me? :/ Both, I suppose, ended up being good, but the almond seemed to be the winner among my testers. ^^;

Then there's me... I took the peach and raspberry tart ($3.49), which was probably the least Jewish-looking of the three and looked more Amish (I was looking at the 'Amish Baker's Bible' the week before at the bookstore :D) with a pie-like shell and stuffed with homemade filling. However you can call it, I really liked this: perfect dough, tons of peaches -- this is what pies *should* taste like! My only comment was that they shouldn't call it raspberry... there was one. Still, loving baked goods with peaches (something pretty rare, I think), I enjoyed this.. though upon a return visit, I'll still have to nab something with... poppy seeds. O.O (very obsessed, I know...)

Rating: ***