The Heart of The City – The Best Vancouver Bakeries

Vancouver city has a heart.

You can find it beating in several unlikely locations, where hands-on bakers still produce wonderful bread, food for the heart.

Fashion has dictated alternate forms of carbohydrate intake. Boomers scarf down green, red and pale ‘wraps’ holding fillings of all manner, and with superior smiles, claim they are avoiding the recently maligned carbohydrates. Nope, they’re just eating the same number of easily-digested calories, maybe a bit more colourfully tinted, but just as farinaceous.

But good breads still abound. I craved a good loaf of mixed whole grain, so decided to bake one.

Wrong move. Even the seagulls refused it. It was chock full of whole grains, all right, but emerged from the oven dense as a brick and rock hard. I had invented a building block, or a lethal weapon.

Sweet Success Bakery

On Davie Street there works a man, thirty five years in the same location, who bakes everything but the samosa in his shop. The name is enchanting: “Sweet Success Bakery”.   It is situated at 1165 Davie Street.

Daily, he produces ten kinds of bread. He makes lovely cakes, pastries, cookies and treats. His is my usual neighbourhood bakery

Multigrain with Flax

He hand crafts his wares, as carefully and as skillfully as a potter would. His shop smells a lot better than potteries, especially those specializing in the ghastly smelling glazes. He is unfailingly cheerful. If you want to speak with him, he wipes his floury hands on his spotless apron, and comes to talk. His wife and daughter run the till, and make good coffee, and the muffins are wonderful. I am hard put to choose my favourite among his breads, but the Multigrain with Flax is worth carrying home.

(Excuse me. I need to make a Bread Run)

Back again, I chew on a slice of his around $3.00  Multigrain. Stick to the ribs, serious bread, this is, heart-warming and earthy. It bears traces of yeast, but very subtle, the sesame seeds on the crust are in just the right proportions. The crumb is chewy and filling. One slice suffices, two would be a meal, and this baby can take any sandwich filling you throw on it:  Tuna salad won’t turn it into a soggy mass, meats and cheeses savoury with real mustard and a non hydrogenated margarine will still be appetizing at supper time. Brown Baggers Alert: This bud is for you!

Maple Leaf Bakery

One block further west sits another small, old shop, this one sports the very Canadian name “Maple Leaf Bakery”.  At 1216 Davie Street, its unassuming façade belies the variety and high standard of its products.

Now, this wholegrain bread was completely different from all the others. Somehow silkier, light texture with amazing separation of flavours. ‘I don’t know how he does it, but he does it’ as we used to sing about a fuddy duddy watchmaker. This baker is utterly NON fuddy duddy, but oh, what a light hand he has, and for a young man, he has far to go. Tender crust, light, tasty: What a lunch sandwich, but I suggest carrying soggy fillings separately. Not going to appeal to a white bread fancier because of the blended grains, but very healthy. Very reasonable, again $2.28.

To be fair, I decided to visit a chain bakery. “Cobs Bread” absolutely gleams with clean glass and shiny shelves, and a most outgoing, easy-spoken, skilled baker. This store is not a shop. This is an installation, almost directly across from ‘Sweet Success’, it occupies 1160 Davie Street, next to a great produce market. (This street is foodie heaven, except for no ‘real’ butchers.) Cobs is pricy, the loaves running over $4.00, up to just over $5.00.

Cobs Bakery Vancouver

Capeseed Bread

Cobs doles out a multi-seeded whole grain, "Capeseed Bread" that weighs a ton, you have to really chew hard, and does it ever fill you up!  You KNOW it’s good for you, but it doesn’t sing. Good, solid bread, this can carry any filling you lay on it.  Their multi grain also fits the bill for those who choose to be pedestrians: Dammit, you know it’s good for you, but you do have to work at it.

Believe it or not, the look and smell of Cob’s sourdough tempted me. WOW! Crunchy shell, rich sour flavor, maybe only West Coasters love that flavor, and the second day it had intensified. I can eat this, for a treat, once in a while, maybe.

Bakery at the Nesters Market

I have a grocery store, over two corners, so close I can see it as I sit here, in the heart of this burdgeoning city. Locals shop there, they are open seemingly endless hours, the staff is friendly and helpful, and they have a killer deli and yummy pastries. Such a beguiling name: “Nesters” has the corner of Nelson Street and Seymour Street, its actual address is 990 Seymour Street.

Ah ha, thought I, let’s give their Multigrain a trial. I picked up a cello wrapped, sliced loaf, of their brand, all legally labeled: calories, best-before-date, sodium content and all that blah blah. Now, I don’t buy cello wrapped bread, but a taste test comparison dictated that I sample this product.

Nesters’ Multigrain

And another prejudice bit the dust.

Well, not the DUST, exactly, but the bread.

Now this baby is yummy. It is dense, it has good chew, it smells right (yeasty, grainy, seedy, slightly sweet), and it stood up to other multigrain loaves I have enjoyed. The hoot! I nearly had to kill it with a stick: I tested it daily, for six days stored at room temperature, in its own wrapper. It cost all of $2.28.

No changes. What IS this?

But on the seventh day? Ah ha, the universe spoke, and smote it with mold. Shelf life, indeed. Wow, you can take this one on a camping trip.
But one more surprise.

Deep, deep in the heart of the city, down the steps at Skytrain Stadium plaza (remember dear Vancouver runs its Skytrain underground!) there is a wonderland of Asian foods, our beloved T&T Market, at 129 Keefer Street.

The sleeper of my research was waiting for me, here, right in the oldest part of Vancouver. This area clumps together Old Chinatown, Old Gastown, old Hastings and Cordova and the original merchandizing district: What a mixture it presents.

T&T Bakery reflects just such a mixture. African students who lived with me, Saudis and Turks all fell for the incredibly light, beautiful and delicious cakes turned out here every day. This was THE source of truly beautiful treats. 

So it caught me by surprise, when I tasted their multigrain bread. A lovely, silky loaf that set me back a mere $2.18.

Its name is Udame.

I am in love.

Swept away on the tides of their special Japanese recipe, the ingredients a linguistic mystery to me, my tastebuds shrieked “Mum, buy me MORE!”  This is not a cognitive decision; this is not a checkoff sheet score; this is not in any way rational. This bread is pure gut level delight.

Its name is Udame

Soft, squishy, (remember I warned you this was not going to scholarly); so full of luscious tastes: sweet, nutty, complex as a fine wine it beggars my description. It has held up well for three days at room temperature, seems to have lost none of its silkiness, and perhaps has even enhanced its taste.   

Vancouver has a heart like no other city. Centred on the small downtown peninsula, maybe twenty-seven blocks wide at its widest, fifteen blocks deep, it’s a small core. And we’re talking small blocks here, in both directions, and to lighten the mix even more, each is bisected in the rear by paved lanes. It presents a truly mixed neighbourhood, one undergoing yet another change in its makeup, a series that has reflected the changes the larger regions of the city have experienced.

The downtown core is a microcosm of the city as a whole. Rising from water level, at the north end of Howe, Hornby, Burrard, Granville, it marches uphill. Like the Noble Duke of York and his ten thousand men, downtowners walk up hill, then they walk downhill,  and I mean walk, everywhere. Streets are lined with trees, slim forms that blossom in the spring, provide leafy sidewalk cover for summer and brilliant hues in autumn
Napoleon would have approved of downtown Vancouver. He passed regulations that guaranteed a local baker would be situated in every town and village of France.

We have bakeries here with heart. What fun it has been to explore several new ones, all within easy walking distance, just as M. Bonaparte would have dictated.

All photos by www.soulosphere.com