The Pennyloaf Bakery

A real disappointment. We were delighted to see a new bakery setting up in the neighborhood, hoping that the bread would be awesome so we could be regulars. Sadly, this isn’t going to be the one.
They have some nice sweet treats — the ginger cookies were awesome, if pricey. But the bread. Sigh. Well, if it came wearing a fedora, you’d know what you were getting. It’s basically hipster bread. Dense, heavy enough to do battle with (Terry Pratchett’s dwarf bread comes to mind), «artisanal» (I think they think this means «wonky shaped»), with a crust so chewy it even takes the dog 5 minutes to gnaw through it. Scorchy spot on the outside from the wood oven, I suppose. The interior has an okay crumb, but a little overworked and chewy. The flavour was nice enough, but nothing spectacular.
The worst part, though, is the price. $ 7.00 a loaf. That’s a heckuva lot of pennies for a single loaf of whole wheat bread. If we hadn’t placed an advance order, we’d have turned around and walked out.
With the already-​established Frenchway offering a better product at a lower price less than a block away, I don’t see a future here.

This cute new bakery recently opened up in late October 2015 on Corydon close to the intersection of Lilac and Corydon. It’s a small-​batch artisan bakery produces old-​world style bread and bakery products baked fresh daily on a wood-​fired brick oven. I haven’t tried their breads yet but it’s made with wild yeast (traditional sourdough leaven) and has no additives or preservatives. Baguettes and sour doughs adorn this place. Croissants will be coming soon but aren’t on the menu at the moment. They sell cookies, scones, danishes, tortes, whole cakes can be ordered and even sandwiches to go.
The shop is tiny but beautiful — I’m a sucker for bakeries. Now I will warn you that the prices are kinda steep compared to other bakeries around the city (at least for the items I purchased). I was very intrigued by their heavy cream dark chocolate scone that went for a whopping $ 4.25 — yes, that’s for one normal sized scone. Now, I was hoping to hate it since it was so pricey but it was really delicious. The dark chocolate did not overwhelm the scone. The scone had a lovely taste and was at the perfect moisture level. It was really good but that price is hard to justify for me. Also tried a peach danish with some custard filling for $ 5 — this was not a flakey danish but more like a soft bread bun style, which I liked but my sister preferred a more flakey danish. The filling was very well balanced and not overly sweet but once again at $ 5, it was a bit steep. They sell a variety of cookies and the one that caught my attention was the milk chocolate chip cookie with pretzels and potato chips ($ 1.75 each). This was a soft but dense cookie that was sweet from the milk chocolate and while I didn’t get a lot of pretzel and chips, the latter items provided a bit of texture to the typical cookie.
Service is incredibly friendly here and despite the higher than expected prices I will be visiting them again and trying other items. It’s a quality product and everything I tasted was good.
They are open Wed-​Fri 10 am– 6 pm and Sat 9 am– 5 pm.