Breakfast bakery: Local independent vs. Local supermarket

One of my co-workers celebrated his birthday today (63). To celebrate, he brought in some bakery items from Hi-Quality Bakery in Cannon Falls. It’s a nice local independent bakery.

Unbeknownst to Dave, someone else in the department also brought bakery in honor of his birthday. Hers came from Byerly’s, a nice local supermarket.

With the unexpected bounty of bakery goods, we joked that one of the boxes was for President Obama who also celebrated his birthday today. Sadly, he spent the day in Chicago and didn’t stop by to claim his donut.

So we took an informal poll – which is better? Local independent bakery or local supermarket bakery?

Here are a few of the votes:

“I vote the (Hi-Quality) bakery. Donuts get hard really quickly, but the bakery donuts were still very soft and fresh. Yum!”

“I tried to pick similar donuts and the Hi-Quality Bakery was too greasy and sugary. Byerly's was a
smoother texture (popover egg consistency) and frosting was creamy. My vote is for Byerly's.”

“Hi-Quality - A+ on appearance for Byerly's, but overall better taste for HQ!”

“The almond pastry I ate from Byerly's was heavenly - I vote Bylery's!”

Well, I also had the almond pastry from Byerly’s. It was good, but too dry. Dave’s solution was to put butter on. I agree. Butter would make it better. But the ‘caramelized croissant’ from Hi-Quality was to die for. Later in the day, I had a sugar donut from Byerly’s. It was very good.

I’ll give the last word to Dave. He favors Hi-Quality. (Duh. That’s what he brought.) He believes HQ gets the edge on freshness. As a small independent, everything is baked fresh overnight so when you arrive in the morning, it’s as fresh as you can get.