If you blink while looking for Vienna Bakery, you might miss it. For openers, the shop's only visible from 63rd Avenue just when you hit an underpass. Your only option is to hit an exit heading north on Gateway Boulevard, but even then, first-time visitors miss that critical sortie at least once.
But when you finally make to the bakery, the effort is worth it. Bread and pastries adorn the shelves of the front lobby, almost all of them baked only hours earlier. Apple strudels jockey for display space with sausage rolls, cinnamon buns, and cakes galore. Then there's the bread. White, sourdough, whole wheat, rye – you name it. Vienna Bakery's prolific kitchen has enough choices to suit the tastes of two continents.
And even though owner Brian Jaeger is German, he is quick to point out that the bakery doesn't strictly service one type of clientele. “We do have options for everybody,” he says. “We tend to think of ourselves as a European bakery, not so much defining ourselves to one specific culture.”
Still, Brian notes there are a few significant differences in the baking mindset between Europe and North America. “You don't necessarily find poppy seed slides on the shelves as you would in European bakeries,” he says. “In the use of the butter cream our cakes, they're not as sweet as you would find in your typical grocery stores.”
