Baked With Love at the Bake Shop

The Bake Shop
195 Harbord Street
416-850-8039

The first time I walked into the Bake Shop I did a double take. For a brief moment I wondered if by accident I had walked into someone’s home kitchen. The set up of this quaint bakery is not typical of a shop. There is no store front, no back of house, and no divide between customer and shop keeper. Indeed, it does look like a home.

The Bake Shop truly is the little store that could. The location on Harbord Street, once home to a bike repair shop, has been Joanne Luo’s dream come true for the last eight months. The shop’s growing popularity is solely based on word-of-mouth advertising, and the simple fact that Joanne’s baked goods are made with organic fresh ingredients. The bread she kneads by hand and bakes daily; the cheesecakes, cookies, ice cream, and the rich velvet cake are all miraculously made in the small kitchen. Her baked goods fuse together the taste of expert pastry making, and homemade goodness. Her small batches of baked goods change daily based on available in-season ingredients.

Ten years ago Joanne emigrated to Canada from Guangzhou, China, where she worked many odd jobs in the manufacturing industry. She desired to come to Canada because she imagined it to be a place she could make anything happen. It is here that she first fell in love with the idea of baking and cooking by watching the Food Network. Quickly realizing she had both a knack and a passion for baking she enrolled in a pastry program at George Brown College, then worked in many restaurants alongside pastry chefs, learning tricks of the trade and holding on to the hope that one day she would have her own shop. In May of last year her dream materialized and she opened The Bake Shop as a part time venture while maintaining other night jobs. Joanne quickly realized her business demanded her attention full time; she has not been able to take a day off since.

Sitting in Joanne’s kitchen is like sitting at a friend's kitchen table. She puts on the kettle for organic tea and serves me one of her organic oatmeal cookies on a little plate. Eager, passionate, and full of stories about customers who have helped her build her client base in such a short time, she tells me about the high school students who come each day for her cookies, and about the bus driver who stops in front of her shop to get her cake and who passes out her business cards to passengers on the bus.

A few customers pop in to pick up their orders or to simply get their hands on whatever is left of the daily baking. Joanne chats with each one and thanks them for recommending other customers to her store. She even hand-slices the bread and specially decorates a cheese cake with blueberries on short notice.

The neighbourhood has been very supportive of her business and many of the regulars have rallied behind Joanne to continue to make her dream grow. She hopes in the future to find a business partner and expand when the time is right. For now, however, it is a one woman show.

There is something unique that goes on in the kitchen of Joanne’s Bake Shop. When asked what the secret is to her baking, she tells me it’s simple; people want to eat food that is good and is good for them.

For tomorrow I have special ordered some of her goat cheese organic whole wheat bread. She tells me she makes a few loafs daily but usually they are the first to go. Also, she promises, there will be carrot cake as she packs up some quiche and cookies in a brown paper bag.

Visitors to the Annex would be well-rewarded to step off the Bloor Street strip and pay The Bake Shop a visit. Be warned, however, Joanne tells me most people who try her products are back for more. One customer who purchased a cake kept waking up in the middle of the night to have slices. She told Joanne she just could not get the cake out of her mind.