Gloucester Bakery

Bakery: Gloucester Bakery
Address: 398 Ferrier St, Markham ON
Website: n/a
Style: Chinese
Price: $

Gloucester is, as I just recently learned, apparently a semi-chain of Chinese bakeries, with three locations in the north GTA. One location is inside the fairly obscure mall behind Metro Square Mall (the mini mall at Steeles and Ferrier)and that's where I was a couple weeks ago, wandering aimlessly around after discovering that the amazing Hunan Garden is no more ;___;.

This Gloucester is rather tiny and quite insignificant; even a bakery hound like me walked past it and had to backtrack. It certainly doesn't have the same turnaround as other Chinese bakeries and the lady behind the counter was so amazed by my arrival that I doubt whether they've ever had a white customer. ;D However, the items were freshly baked (some just came out of the oven, as the lady excitedly pointed out) and looked typical of a smaller-production Chinese place. Selection was limited, due most likely to lack of space. A couple of meat buns, some sweet buns (pineapple, coconut, cream -- all the usuals), and prepacked egg tarts was well, pretty much it. There were also two cakes behind the glass. As with all Chinese bakeries, everything was labelled and priced; I found prices to be more than usual. Actually, I was under the impression that the prices were marked up for the purpose of selling the deals: buy three buns, and get no tax (except most bakeries don't charge tax) and 10% off. And having a third bun dropped onto my tray without my consent got a little on my nerves. It's not like it was buy two, get one free. :/

So I did get suckered into the buy three "deal" and came out with one pastry and, due to lack of choice, with two run-of-the-mill buns. In total, I paid $3.30. The first of the latter was a "sweet bun" ($1.30). I picked it simply because I didn't feel like eating a stuffed bun and it looked like something lighter. It was a plain bun with a sort of crumble spread across the top. It tasted too strongly of peanut (oil or butter) and, seeing as I'm not in any way a peanut butter fan, I didn't really like that. The bun's texture wasn't as soft and airy as usual; it was slightly oily and the density made this a little overwhelming for a plain bun. Similarly, the coconut twist ($1.30) had a better, less dense texture, but it lacked the coconut that other places seem to dole a little more generously and so it seemed more like another plain bun. In short, I haven't really bought Chinese buns lately, but these two somewhat disappointed.

Conversely, there was the wife pastry ($1.30): smaller, flaky pastries filled with an almost chewy wintermelon filling. Recently, my occasional samplers and I have been trying more of these little pastries and this one was by far the best we've seen. Great, flaky and flavourful dough with a delicate, slightly sweet filling that didn't give you the impression you're choking on gum like it did elsewhere. I'm a little curious about that $6 freshly-baked cake the worker tried to sell us, but other than that, I'd definitely only stick to the pastries.

Rating: **1/2