Walla Artisan Bakery [RIP]

Bakery: Walla Artisan Bakery
Address: 114-1475 Fairview Rd, Penticton BC
Website: http://wallafoods.com/
Style: Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Israeli
Price: $$$

I recently did a fairly thorough tour of Penticton. The first stop was this artisan bakery located inside the Cannery market (though it's not much of a market) that also doubles up as a quaint cafe serving hot lunch items. In some ways, owing to the limited selection of items up for sale (many shelves were empty on an early Saturday afternoon), it might be more a cafe than a bakery, though Walla does sell bread, some cake and a few rotating baked goods which include Middle Eastern classics like baklava, chocolate babka along with French staples like pain au chocolat. So while the choices are limited, they do look good; in that sense, the one thing detracting me from buying up more was the price. At prices starting at $5 for an individual baked good or $4.50 for a piece of baklava, I thought it was a bit much.

Still, one look at the Italian plum and almond danish ($5) and my mind was made up. Firstly, it was so nice to see something different and baked goods using plum -- well, it would perhaps be more appropriate to say "prune" -- are definitely few and far between, so I always like to give them a try when I do see them. Maybe it didn't look too photogenic, but it was good in taste: a softer dough (though I would have like it to be flakier) stuffed with a filling of prune jam and almond mass. The prunes were slightly sour, not too sweet or homogeneous, and they really complimented the more subtle flavour of the almond. Nice amount of dough. Good, slightly more elevated pastries from a skilled bakery.

Rating: ***