my favourite bakery of anywhere

Cowichan Bay is a little fishing village about 10-15 minutes by car to Duncan. We used to live in Cowichan Bay when I was in Junior High, from age 13-15. I loved Junior High-hated High School! Anyhow, I used to walk down the hill from our place every morning to come into the village to catch the school bus. I remember even in Jr. High thinking how beautiful it was in the morning when the bay would be socked in with white poofy clouds which I could see below me as I walked down the steep hill. Clouds below you are always beautiful, I think. But I don't remember being too aware of "beauty" in Jr. High, so to be impressed by Cow Bay's beauty at that time, it must have been quite beautiful. Cow Bay also really stunk?Stank?Stinked? of fish in those days, but doesn't anymore. Now it smells like bread.

True Grain Bakery bakes great bread every morning, and people come from far and wide to buy it. My family buys their bread exclusively from here - a spelt loaf about twice a week, and a spelt baguette once in a while. They also have oatmeal and cream of spelt cereal, and I buy flour and wheat and spelt bran from there. So every weekend we come and have coffee and buy bread. And it's a great place for people watching, which is refreshing because Duncan can be so slow, it's nice to be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of people! It's great to see a little bakery so busy and thriving, and I believe it's the best of what the Cowichan Valley has to offer. There are a few great places like the bakery around the valley serving natural foods and people here really appreciate it. People just stream into that little bakery all day long, it's always busy, and I'm so happy for them.

The bakery is great because it gets all its wheat & kamut from the Canadian prairies, and gets spelt from BC when it's available and it's all organic grains. They don't use commercial yeast leavening. And then they have a little flour mill right on the premises, and they grind everything there, and bake with it. It's fresh and you know where the ingredients are coming from. They also use organic Avalon bakery milk, and other things like that. And they make a nice Americano. I really wish they had a place like this in Vancouver. They were hiring a baker's apprentice a few months ago and I seriously considered taking the position, learning how to do it, and then open up a place like it in Vancouver. But I don't think I'm that much of a baker at heart to dedicate my life to it like that, I'll just have to appreciate True Grain Bakery every time I come back to the Island.