Maple Leaf Bakery

Bakery: Maple Leaf Bakery 
Address: 424 4 Ave, Moose Jaw SK 
Website: n/a 
Style: Canadian 
Price: $ 

At the beginning of August, I embarked on a road trip from Toronto to Kelowna. Five provinces. Six days. Sure, the main purpose wasn't to go cake touring, but it was certainly a top priority, especially considering that I am still aiming for 150 bakeries from all over the country! Here are the results.

I was intent on doing a bakery in Moose Jaw and this one instantly came up, though there's very little information about it online. Usually, this doesn't bode well and I already encountered a few on my trip like that, but Maple Leaf is indeed open! Stepping into this small, long-established bakery, at first glance, there wasn't that much selection, at least in the actual display cases, but then you realize that baked goods are either presented on cookie trays in the window or behind the counter on racks. And unlike a great many bakeries, the focus seems to be on the sweet goods -- yes!

Maple Leaf was one pleasant surprise after another; first, amid the doughnuts, cinnamon buns and butter tarts, I spotted it. Yup, it was a poppy seed bun -- my first poppy seed bun of the trip! *-* The next surprise came in the form of the price: I paid $1.90, with taxes, for the poppy seed bun AND cinnamon bun. Together. Whoa. Elsewhere, a bun with so much poppy seed would set me back at least $2.50!

And how did it taste? Amazing! This was a generous, what I call a Russian-style poppy seed mass. Very black, pure poppy seeds and lots of it, rolled around a soft, fluffy, pull-apart dough. I haven't had such a good poppy seed bun in so long!

Then there was the cinnamon bun. Similar soft, fluffy dough as the poppy seed bun with a nice amount of cinnamon that got a bit nice and gooey in the centre. As always, I'm not the biggest fan of raisins and thought this would have been better without, but still tasty. Yes, it's not the poppy seed, but besides that....

Rating: ***1/2