Tree Stone Bakery

There’s a delectable little bakery over the road that makes me feel as though I’m living back in England at times. Admittedly, there’s usually a huge 4x4 parked outside whenever I go in, and the shop itself is situated on a busy main road along which more 4x4s and pick-up trucks thunder pass, but you can’t win them all.

What’s so lovely about this little place – and it is little – is that there’s usually something different in there every time I go in. They don’t seem to stick to the usual fare. I think the master baker must like to experiment. So far I’ve tried three different loaves, the baguette (excellent!), and a few pastries. Last week I had a poppy seed pastry (pictured). It wasn’t made in the usual way with the poppy seeds scattered throughout the pastry, but rather with a lump of poppy seeds (more a sort of spawn of them), dolloped in the middle. And it was delicious!

What’s also nice about this place is that they put all the goods in natty little brown paper bags which carry their logo. And this helps me feel at home when I walk from the bakery to my house (which is a few blocks away). Mainly because I am actually walking home carrying a loaf of bread which I’ve bought in a bakery. Something I took for granted when I lived in England, but which living here in Alberta, I rarely get to do, mainly because these little independent bakeries are few and far between (although having said that, I now recall there’s another one three or four blocks around the corner from the Tree Stone!). But that one’s not as quaint as the Tree Stone, nor does it have a little door chime that sounds every time you walk in and out.

They say that surrounding yourself with things that remind you of home can help with feelings of homesickness - especially when those things are poppy seed pastries and baguettes!