Boulangerie Pain à Tartine

Bakery: Boulangerie Pain à Tartine
Address: 1271 Ontario St E, Montreal, QC
Website: http://painatartine.com/
Style: French, Canadian
Price: $$

I sometimes like to scour "best of" lists for bakeries that I may have missed or otherwise not been interested in. Pain à Tartine appeared on a couple, so I decided to check it out. This bakery is very local ingredient oriented and uses all organic flour, natural homegrown yeast - stuff that I wholeheartedly support. Despite that, they are indeed a boulangerie, with the focus by far being on rustic, artisan breads. Perhaps coming later in the afternoon was the big mistake, since people rave about pastries that weren't there. The place was so lacking in sweets - whether that be cakes or pastries - that I was seriously contemplating walking about. There was nothing there!

Finally, I did settle on the blueberry cranberry muffin ($3.25) just to make the walk here on a blistering cold day worth it. I usually don't rate bakeries based on muffins, so whenever that's the case, you know I was desperate. I will admit, though, that the blueness of these muffins intrigued me - these looked fruit-loaded! With that much fruit, I figured they couldn't be too bad. However, biting into it, I discovered a recurring problem with "healthy" baking. Healthy baking doesn't need to be sugar loaded to be good; rather, healthy baking with high-quality ingredients is not synonymous with flavourless. These muffins had no taste. Some honey, some more cranberries for tartness.... the dough was so dense and dry that it didn't even stick together. It just crumbled and the chia on top were too small and grainy, leaving an unpleasant crunch like you'd just eaten a seed mix, not a baked good. This, sorry to say, wasn't a muffin at all.... :/

Rating: **