Georgian Bakery

Bakery: Georgian Bakery
Address: 253 King St, Midland ON
Website: www.georgianbakery.ca
Style: European, North American
Price: $$

Ha ha the second my brother brought in a bag from Georgian Bakery after he had gone on a hiking expedition, I got super excited, since I thought the "Georgian" referred to the country (always on the lookout for ethnic baked goods) ... turns out it referred to Georgian Bay -- and that the closest Georgian bakeries from Toronto is Vancouver, Chicago or Brooklyn. Ouch. There goes that ethnic find... Ahem, so there are no Georgian treats at Georgian Bakery (just so everyone's clear ;D), but there is a hodgepodge of North American favourites like various pies, doughnuts (their website claim they've got 'the best in town'; that no one tried), and tortieres, as well a whole bunch of baked goods that are very, very Eastern European -- my mom was suspecting it might even be a Polish bakery, but their owners aren't... all I do know is someone knows how to make some good poppy seed buns on the premises. ;)

This brother doing a lot better job at purchasing than my youngest one does (well, besides not having any clue how much anything cost!), we ended up with a bit of everything including a whole apple pie, which was alright, though a lot of other places do it better. The filling, in particular, was slightly sour and stuffed with very firm, almost fresh apples and dotted on top with a few red spots which were or might have not been cherries. I know many Polish bakeries make their apple cake in this style, and it's not one I particularly like, so I wasn't too thrilled with this (a tad too much glaze also..).

Similar to this was the small tart which was put in the same bag as a sweet bun and consequently smushed. :/ I thought this was cherry, but it turned out to be.. rhubarb, possibly? I remember seeing bits of stringy fruit or perhaps it was cherry mixed with something else, as the nondescript, mildly tart taste itself didn't point to any one fruit. The shell and the flower with rock sugar on top (which reminded me very much of Dufflet) were both made of shortbread and quite delicious, though I really would have liked more actual fruit inside, whatever it was supposed to be. :P Not bad though!

Two sweet buns (one cherry and the other... (oh, can you possibly guess what it is?) poppy seed -- big surprise!) were also purchased. The poppy seed one in particular was actually surprisingly good; I say surprisingly, because both sweet buns, even ~two hours after purchase, were clearly not freshly baked. I'm not sure whether they were baked at night or the day before, but they were already growing hard and stale, especially where there was no filling. The cherry was especially... past the pinnacle of freshness. The morning after, the dry bread feeling detracted from the taste, though it was actually good: the dough light and airy with just poppy seeds stuffed in the middle and topped with crumble and icing. Once you got in the middle where the icing and poppy seed kept it moist, mmmmm.... There wasn't a lot of poppy seed, but you didn't need all that much more. It was excellent... if it were a little more fresh!

Overall, there were a few small things needing improvement and I would have LOVED for the yeast goods to be fresher (there are some baked goods that can be baked in advance while others cannot sit around for long), but taste-wise, Georgian Bakery was very good and I'd probably return for those poppy seed buns if in the area... and perhaps try their doughnuts as well. ;)

Rating: **1/2