We are only open 4 days as our facilities are not large enough to accommodate more production, which is why we encourage placing orders (especially for bread or specialty pastries); while we try to make enough to carry us through to 2:30-3pm everyday, we never know if we will have a rush and sell out before noon. In that instance we will try to bake more, but the options are very limited as much of what we make is leavened and is prepared the night before.
We take orders through email or private message on Facebook/Instagram. Orders must be placed by 4pm the day before you'd like to pick up, and can be placed up to a week in advance. Always let us know quantity, specify the day you'd like to pick it up, and we will confirm your order. Unconfirmed orders may not be filled -- if we haven't responded, you can contact us again, we are human and sometimes miss things.
We make almost everything we sell in house, which takes a lot of labour and space.; our kitchen is not large enough for our ideas or the demand for them. Production starts on Tuesday at 9am and takes 4 people working for 2 days to open, and the days we are open we start early and end very late. Four days is barely sustainable at this stage. Graham and I live upstairs, and it's important to us to have our home to ourselves one day a week.
We sell sourdough breads, so they have a shelf life of about 6 days. The first day it is the softest, but the flavour has not yet developed. If you'd like, you can leave the bread after it is cut with the open end facing a cutting board for a day if you're likely to eat it all in 2 days. You can also place the bread back in the paper bag and keep in a plastic ziplock or container. The paper bag will help absorb humidity. Do not store in the fridge. This will speed up the staling process.
Yes! Many pastries freeze very well. If you don't plan to eat them right away, we suggest freezing in a container as soon as possible to retain freshness. Pull them out a few hours before you'd like to eat, allowing them to thaw on the counter. For croissants and whole loaves of bread, you can refresh them once thawed in the oven until they have a crisp exterior (5-10 min at 325 should do).
WE ARE PRESENTLY SUSPENDING OUR BESPOKE CAKE SALES UNTIL WE HAVE HIRED STAFF. PLEASE CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES.
(When we offer cakes, we require minimum 72 hours, but longer is preferred. Since we do not make cakes for the shop, making bespoke cakes can take a significant amount of time, and we need time to fit it into our production schedule. Our cakes are priced based on flavour and size, and we charge an "off-menu" fee to make up for added labour)
We do. We attempted to go nut-free for a while, but my French-training has me going back to almonds and hazelnut regularly. We use walnuts, pecans, and pistachios sparingly, and try to use sunflower seeds in place of things like pine nuts in our pesto, or walnuts in the base of nanaimo bars. We do not make anything with peanuts, but we do have peanut products in the building (as we live upstairs) but we don't store or use it on the main floor.
We know some of you have sesame allergy, and I am very sorry to say, as with most bread bakeries, we use sesame quite a bit. We use it daily in our seed bread, and add it to our chocolate babka for more dimension. If your allergy is limited to not consuming it directly, many of our items are a possibility for you. If the allergy is more severe, I don't recommend any of our baked goods. Sesame is like sand at the beach -- it ends up everywhere.
We use Moulins de Soulanges white flour for our breads and pastries. Moulins de Soulanges is not Organic but they use Quebec certified "sustainable" grains. By using Moulins de Soulages, we offer the quality of an organic flour at a two thirds the price. We use Organic Milanaise whole wheat, Khorasan, Spelt, and Rye flours, also grown and milled in Quebec.
All our pastries are made with organic cane sugar. We occasionally use locally produced maple syrup or honey. While using maple syrup and honey have additional nutrients and minerals, the body doesn't process them differently from refined sugars, but they can change the flavours quite a bit. Organic cane sugar is less refined than white sugar, retaining some nutrients. Our use of whole grains and cane sugar means a darker final product; this is one reason why our pastries are darker than most.
We do use non-organic icing sugar in certain products (glazes and in Nanaimo bar filling), Our frostings are always made with organic sugar -- we make French/Swiss/Italian/German Buttercreams instead of American style as we prefer the texture and flavour.
We wish! While we love making fresh doughnuts, our business license and insurance does not accommodate deep-frying, and honestly we are very happy to not smell like a fryer all the time.
We cannot refer to any of our products as "gluten free" since we work mostly with wheat flour and, honestly, it gets *everywhere*. We do, however, produce many items made without wheat. All Brownies, Blondies, Oatmeal cookies, Ice Cream Sandwiches, Opera/Dacquoise cakes (when available) are always made with blends of oat and other flours instead of wheat.
While we have both worked in catering, for the most part WE DO NOT CATER.
We will happily put together sandwich platters and pastry boxes for up to 30 people, but we do not provide any direct service, and we are only able to deliver under very narrow circumstances. Extending ourselves beyond the shop would negatively affect our present business and we prefer to stay small with exceptional quality.