Breka Bakery

Restaurant: Breka Bakery
Cuisine: Bakery/Desserts
Last visited: December 17, 09
Location: Vancouver, BC (South Vancouver/Fraser)
Address: 6533 Fraser Street
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 3 (but it really depends for what)
Service: 3
Ambiance: 2
Value: 5
Overall: 4
Additional comments:

• German family owned
• German bakery specializing in European desserts
• Savoury cafe foods available
• Breads made fresh daily from scratch, by hand
• Halla Bread on Fridays
• On site bakery
• Organic free-trade coffee
• Excellent value
• Generous portions
• Budget friendly/cheap eats
• Neighbourhood favourite
• Very casual
• Eat in/Take-out
• Open 24/7

**Recommendations: Poppy seed tart, but apparently chocolate mousse cake and cheesecakes are popular, but I didn’t try them.

Dessert and I get along very well. I spent some time in Europe exploring traditional European desserts which helped with my visit to Breka Bakery. I’m also blessed with great friends so I’ve been lucky enough to have tried home baked European desserts too. The style of desserts at Breka Bakery is a bit mass produced and all over the place as they offer a large variety of savoury and sweet baked goods and desserts. They were more Eastern European than Western and they had a bit of American flair to them. I only tried 3 desserts at Breka so I really need to try more to get a better idea.

I have heard of Breka Bakery before but the reviews for it were only okay. I knew it was a 24 hour place so it’s not like I was expecting oompa loompas in the back making desserts 24/7. However I was expecting very homemade style desserts, but they were actually quite professional, but not artisan professional. They were grocery store professional. Just standardized and very mass produced looking – maybe it was how they were displayed that made me think this way. When I see desserts like this I can’t help but to think how long it’s been sitting there for. Next time I will go in the morning because I think it would have been better.

I think it’s popular and well-liked mainly for its portion, price and hours. For the price you pay it does the job and settles the sweet tooth. It is not the best, but for the area and for what you get, it’s fine. I wish they had more options – they have a lot, but only 4 things made me “ooh” and “ahh”… and I LOVE dessert (if I haven’t made that clear ;)).

On the table:

**Poppy Square – 4/6 (Very good)

• A poppy seed square or tart with poppy seed filling $2.50.
• This was my choice. I love poppy seed! The more the merrier and this one had lots of poppy seed.
• I’ve had variations of this Eastern European pastry and this was generous with the poppy seed layer.
• The poppy seed filling was sweet but not too sweet – a little nutty, very moist and paste-like.
• It’s soft and smooth yet it is poppy seeds so there is texture.
• It’s made of poppy seed, sugar and butter and there is also a very subtle tang from lemon juice. It’s not sour though.
• There may also be some honey to round it all out.
• Let it thaw out to room temperature and the flavour really comes through.

• The crust was more of a cake-like crust rather than pie crust, which I liked.
• It was soft, moist and buttery almost like pound cake, yet sturdy enough to hold the heavy poppy seed filling.
• It was actually a tad salty too and it worked with the filling.
• I really liked the thinness of the crust. For this dessert in particular I prefer lots of filling with little crust anyway.
• On top was a soft cake-like lattice top with a sugar syrup and lemon glaze to make it shiny.

Tiramisu – 2/6 (Okay)

• $3.50
• I didn’t like that it was precut. I felt as though it was more of a cake than a tiramisu. It was very dense and not light and fluffy.
• It was more cheesy and and not necessarily with mascarpone.
• The lady fingers could have been more soaked because they were a bit dry and I also couldn’t taste any rum. It just lacked flavour.

• I did not like that there was only one layer of lady fingers and the bottom layer was a cake layer.
• Tiramisu traditionally has two layers of tightly packed lady fingers.
• I also liked them more tightly packed together in a layer, rather than spread out. I like to have a bite of lady finger cookies in every bite.
• Lots of cream but it was sturdy cream and not creamy, but perhaps it needed to thaw out more I’m not sure.

Lemon Custard Bar – 2/6 (Okay)

• $2.25
• This one was dense and sweet and the lemon custard was not as creamy.
• They do call it a bar rather than a tart so maybe the lemon custard was supposed to be more solid.
• It could have been the fact that it was sitting in a chilled display case so it was a bit stiff.
• The flavour of the lemon custard was a bit sweet and I think it could have been more tart.
• It was a radioactive yellow, so I am not sure if it was from a little dye or artificial colouring/flavouring.
• The crust was a shortbread crust and it was very buttery and cookie like.
• I liked the thinness of crust because it made the bar lighter in texture overall. It needed that because the lemon custard was already dense.
• This was edible, but I wouldn’t order it again and it was an okay lemon tart.

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