Korea Bakery [RIP]

Bakery: Korea Bakery
Address: 689 Bloor Street West, Toronto ON 
Website: n/a
Style: Korean
Price: $

 [Well, this place has been boarded up for the past few times I've come to Koreatown. In the fall, there were blinds and a sign, so I thought that maybe they had closed for vacation or something, but it looks like, after all, this place won't be reopening. Another bakery gone. :(]

I was in Koreatown yesterday and thought that I might as well pop into pretty much the last remaining bakery I have to do in this section of Bloor (though I would like to add the walnut cake place too... I've had it a few times and it never dawned on me to do a cake tour of it. Scandalous.)

Anyways, Korea Bakery is a fairly small bakery with a similar format as other Korean bakeries (like BnC down the street), with various sweet, mostly cream-filled buns wrapped and sitting in various baskets. In addition to this, they have several bags of pre-packed cookies, a small assortment of cakes and a few steam buns, sold as a pack of six. Despite not having any prices, these guys are really as cheap as you'll get in terms of Korean baked goods (at least in the buns; not sure what anything else costs), which usually average around $2 for a bun. At $1.25 each, they're a steal! :)

The buns are pretty much the same varieties as you'll see everywhere else, stuffed with red (sometimes green) bean paste, pastry cream or custard, but these guys seems to have a lot with peanut butter and mocha cream, two things I haven't seen so much of in other bakeries. So if you're a fan of peanut butter, check it out.

For myself, I settled on a bun, specifically the "Netherland Bread" ($1.25). Why? I don't know; maybe I'm just uh, craving some Dutch baking. :D Though, I'm not exactly sure what makes it Dutch, but I'm assuming it's the swirl of almond paste on top? Anyways, swirl of almond paste with the bun cut open and filled with a custard resembling the fluffiness of choux cream, not thick pudding. This in itself was a good thing and the bun had a light feeling (though most like deceiving ;D); however, what the cream had in fluffiness, the dough itself lacked it. Korean dough, I find, it quite dense and really soft. Biting into a bun is like.. laying your head on a pillow. XD The dough here was a lot more airy and didn't have that moist softness I've come to expect. It wasn't at the peak of freshness either, but it was alright; I think what it really needed was a little more softness and less of an Italian bread texture, which doesn't suit the purpose.

Besides this, I picked out the red bean doughnut ($1.25), deep-fried, sugar-coated doughnuts stuffed with red bean paste and, as one brother explained, lacked the richness and *pow* that so amazed him at Bakery Nakamura. The red bean paste, in particular, wasn't -- purely in his words -- "beany" enough.. "and with Korean stuff, I'm always afraid of biting in and finding an omelet". O.o Nonetheless: it was alright, but not great.

Overall, I was actually a little surprised to find that my Koreatown stops didn't do as well as I had expected, with both not coming close to the cloud-like softness and freshness of Royal Fauchon, which is the place to beat.

Rating: **1/2