Convent Bakery - Abbotsford

Convent Bakery - Abbotsford
Abbotsford Convent 1 Saint Heliers St, Abbotsford

Baked Good: Tart Linzer
Should you stay, or should you go?: Follow the light and go.

1. Presentation - 3
2. First bite - 2
3 Texture - 3
4. Flavour - 3
5. How'd it make me feel after - 2
(1 - Not so much. 5 - This is fricking awesome)

I love a good bit of history and I love a good bakery. So when the both can be combined, we are winning. There's a bakery back home in Western Australia with a similar story. Age old ovens with a roaring fire kept going by Monks making some of the most wonderful bread, in particular fruit loaf. The only down side is it takes two hours to get there from Perth.

However sitting in the heart of Melbourne is the Abbotsford Convent surrounded by the Collingwood Children’s Farm and Yarra Bend Park and the Convent's 11 buildings full of art, education and culture. You can grab a wonderfully cheap meal, treat yourself to something sweet from the bakery while you wonder the gardens then end your day with a pint. All this and more tucked away in one historical and peaceful place.

Step inside the bakery and you will see a display case of sandwiches and savoury tarts, hot pies, pasties and sausage rolls and the best part is the cakes, pastries and tarts. The sound of the coffee machine buzzing away to the side and if you look back you'll see the ovens built in 1901 still chugging away. The room itself still holds its beauty with the high wooden ceilings and some nic nac's along the wall. You could almost think you were in another time and place.

This visit I enjoyed the Tart Linzer which as it turns out has a history dating to an Austrian Abbey from 1653. To put that in perspective Australia wasn't even founded until 1901 (the same year the ovens at Abbotsford Convent were made). FoodReference.com noted the original recipe to be "rich buttery dough accentuated by almonds, lemon zest, and cinnamon, filled with black currant preserves and topped with a lattice crust". Now it is more commonly known to have a raspberry filling and and you'll most likely find it in a cookie form. The cookie was mass produced and eventually made its way to America in the 1850s.

The tart has a lovely cookie type of base that wasn't too crumbly that it didn't hold its shape, but strong enough to keep it together as you shovel it into your mouth. The raspberry filling was sweet and rich but it wasn't overloaded, so the balance of sweet to pastry was perfect. The pastry latticed across the top has a cinnamon and lemon taste and maybe there was a hint of ginger in there as well which threw it off every so slightly. Topped with a sprinkle of almond shavings and some icing sugar for good measure. A tad dry, but with the jam it kind of works, mind you not enough to try it again any time soon.

Overall the adventure to Abbotsford and the Convent was a fun day. Lots to see and do and eat and drink. It was amazing to see the bakery still up and running after all this time. The bakery had so much to pick from you wont struggle for choice. The meat pies were walking out the door, so if you don't want something sweet a good old pie is worth a shot.

3 out of 5.