French-trained master baker Marc Thobor of Celestin fame has recently taken over the restaurant’s bakery counter and renamed it Thobors Boulangerie. It offers mostly beautiful standard French breads – baguettes, boules, fancy savoury or sweet variations, some croissants and a small variety of danishes, pains au chocolat and the like.
As an immigrant, I’m constantly in search of great bread in Toronto. Being German, I feel drawn to solid, chewy, darker sourdough and/or rye breads. Which are hard to come by: the Russian/Polish rye loaves are too light and fluffy, the Jewish varieties often have caraway seeds. Nice, but not pleasing to the German palate.
Discovering Thobors comes hot on the heels of a recent trip to Germany where we ate great bread – all kinds: seed-covered buns that were light and substantial all at once, the densest, moistest, most smooth-crusted rye bread you can imagine, and lovely 3, 5 or 7 grain breads that easily blew anything Whole Foods Market has ever made out of the water. To date, Dimpflmeier‘s packaged rye breads have been the most consistent option… but they pale a little when compared to Thobors’ crunchy, fresh goodness.
I’m particularly enjoying the seeded baguettes (sesame and poppy), which have a pully, chewy bite. I like my bread to put up a bit of a fight. Pair these with a nice and simple cheese – maybe something like a Morbier – and you’ve got a very European-style quick meal.
Highly recommended. It’s actually worth making a trip up Mount Pleasant for. You could easily combine it with a visit to Bayview Avenue and its little food boutiques. But while there are now at least four bakeries in a one-block radius near Bayview and Millwood, you won’t find break as good as Marc Thobors’. My recommendation on Bayview is tostick with Alex Farm Products for cheese and Passion Fruits for excellent produce.