Nova Pastry & Bakery

Bakery: Nova Pastry & Bakery
Address: 3635 Cawthra Rd, Mississauga, ON
Website: http://www.novabakery.ca/
Style: Portuguese
Price: $

I'm not exactly sure why it look me so long to make my way to Nova (corner of Burnhamthorpe and Cawthra, in the plaza next to the Ukrainian church). I've known of it for awhile now and didn't feel all that pressed in reviewing it. And, as is almost always the case, I was wrong. :P First of all, Portuguese bakeries usually fall under the "bang for your buck" category, but Nova is Cheap. Yes, with a capital -C. AND I really, really appreciated that *everything* is priced. Even the stuff behind the glass has easy to read sheets printed on top detailing the price of everything.

On top of that, their selection is Huge. Again, with a capital -H. Rows of breads and baked goods with buns starting at 28 cents. Sweets (doughnuts, danishes along with the typical Portuguese goodies) are at an amazing $1.30 Individual pastries were already mentioned. They've got cakes and pies as well.

But let's just get right into this. :P First of all, this giant yeast "pretzel" ($1.30) coated with sugar and cinnamon with a super light, airy and fluffy dough. I remembered having had something similar at another bakery (possibly Trigo??) and the next time I went back they didn't have it, and I've been looking for it since, as no one else seems to have it. So yummy!

I picked out this massive (as in the size of dinner plate and too big to fit in a paper bag -_-) "cinnamon snail" ($1.30 -- I hope you get the photo now ^^) which was a huge hit: thin, flaky dough rolled in a spiral and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. What makes this especially tasty is the cinnamon and butter mass stuffed in the middle of the flaky, puff pastry dough. Another wow. ;)

I also got another large flaky pastry with custard spread all over the top layer (didn't make a great picture, so I decided to flip it over ;)) and, in the day-old section, they had a perfectly good and fresh apple pie ($2.50) which ended up being so delicious. I'm not sure if anyone knows what I'm talking about, but Portuguese bakeries usually have these hard, puff pastry squares filled in the centre with apples and then topped with rock sugar on top, so this was that same thing, just in a softer, pie dough. Mmmm... *-* The crunch of the sugar and the softness, semi-tartness of the apples...

Erm, *calms down* all gushing aside, Nova has probably become one of my fave Portuguese bakeries just like that. ;P Everything tasted so good and then with the selection (and price) on top of that, I was really, really impressed!

Rating: ***1/2