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T H E G LO B E A N D M A I L • S AT U R DAY , A U G U S T 2 7 , 2 0 1 1 G M7GLOBE T.O. •
It’s just before 10 a.m. on asteaming hot weekday morn-
ing at Cliffside Hearth, a newbakery on Kingston Road, whentwo women walk brisklythrough the open door and upto the counter. They’re all busi-ness: One has a Bluetooth ear-piece in place, poised forwhatever urgent call mightcome, and the other is cradlinga clipboard.
Clipboard Lady announcesthat she and her accoutred col-league are from a nearbychurch, that they are holding anupcoming bazaar, and that theyare wondering if the bakerycould give them a deal on – andhere she checks what’s writtenon her clipboard – 15 dozen hot-dog buns and a gross of ham-burger buns.
Welcome to Scarborough.Cliffside Hearth is way out
there on Kingston Road, pastthe eastern end of DanforthAvenue, past the Cosy Hungar-ian Dining Lounge at Midland,beyond even the Hav-A-NapMotel at Brimley Road. It’sembedded in a strip mall, ofcourse, hard by a pub andaround the corner from anOntario government servicecentre. And it is producing,thanks to baker and co-ownerDavid Aplin, some of the finesthandmade breads in the city ofToronto.
Mr. Aplin, 53, and his wife andpartner Camelia Proulx, 46,gently inform the two churchladies that they do not, in fact,mass produce hot-dog and ham-burger buns, but thank them forthinking of Cliffside Hearth,which opened in April and isjust beginning to becomeknown in the area.
“Bread has a noble past,” Mr.Aplin, a lanky, self-taught schol-ar on the subject, says a littlelater, “but now it’s relegated tohots and hams.”
Mr. Aplin, dressed all in white,works at his baker’s bench inthe tiny 740-square-foot space,manipulating and cutting stickydough with a self-assurance thatis intimidating to anyone whoseexperience with the substance isrestricted to biannual attemptsat pie crust. To his left is the gi-ant Italian bread oven, its fourshelves ready and waiting fortheir next assignment. Behindhim is a stack of 40-kilo bags ofuntreated and unbleached flourfrom Saskatchewan; to his righton a large cooling rack are
deep-brown miches the size ofhubcaps and dusted with flour,lighter-hued five-grain levainsthe size of partially deflatedAmerican footballs, andbaguettes with sharp pointedends (“the signature of a hand-rolled baguette,” he points out).
Parallel to the cooling rack liesa small counter dominated by acash register and offerings ofshortbreads and cookies; thencomes the tiny retail area, amaybe 45-square-foot collectionof shelves and baskets in thestorefront window, all metic-ulously laid out with pumper-nickel loaves, raisin bread,fougasses, more baguettes andmore varieties of breads.
Nary a hot-dog bun in sight,although there are some largeseed-sprinkled buns designed tohold the hockey-puck-sizedKobe beef burgers from TheButcher Shop, located in thenext strip mall east (and anoth-er culinary gem in the area,with its dry-aged USDA primesteaks, Korean ribs and gargan-
tuan kebabs). The Butcher Shopwas an early champion of Cliff-side Hearth and sells Mr. Aplin’sbaguettes and buns in its busyshop, helping to spread theword.
Not that the couple startedfrom zero. Cliffside Hearth hasits origins in Mr. Aplin and Ms.Proulx’s backyard in the nearbyneighbourhood of Cliffside,where six years ago they built abrick bread oven and startedproducing pizzas and loaves forpersonal consumption. Mr. Aplinwas baking for a local grocerychain, working at a massivebench with experienced bakersfrom around the world butgrowing disillusioned with thechain’s move away from thefresh and toward the frozen; Ms.Proulx was, unknowingly at thetime, coming to the end of along career managing a popularrestaurant in the financial dis-trict.
When a German neighbourtasted the bread they were pro-ducing in their small oven, she
told them she would pay themto bake for her. So they did, andfrom there it wasn’t that longbefore the two of them foundthemselves on a midwinter Fri-day evening firing up the ovenin -25 degree weather, feedingthe sourdough starter, preparingthe dough for 200 loaves ofbread for a long list of clients,and then baking until 4 a.m.Sunday, followed by four hourssleep and then another 12-hourday. “I was mixing the doughwithout an electric mixer,”recalled Mr. Aplin. “I was doingit with my arms. That was thedifference between craft andstupidity.”
Ms. Proulx, meanwhile, had tofind the time between her joband raising the couple’s son toscrounge wood for the ovenfrom local lumberyards andwoodworks. And then the res-taurant she’d been at for morethan 20 years closed down. Shebounced around in a few otherjobs in the hospitality industryand took a course in small-busi-
ness management, which even-tually led to Cliffside Hearth.
Mr. Aplin comes in at 4 a.m.,biking to the bakery to get start-ed on the day’s bread. He getsto combine his ingredients in anelectric mixer these days, andhe doesn’t have to struggle tomaintain the proper tempera-ture in his oven – all he has todo is push a button – but everyloaf is still hand-formed, free ofpreservatives and naturally lea-vened. The couple read incess-antly about bread and itshistory, searching for new reci-pes and techniques; they recent-ly added pizza cavolfiore – awhite pizza with cauliflower androsemary – to their repertoire.
“Many people will travel forgood bread,” says Ms. Proulx asthe traffic on Kingston Roadwhizzes by. Mr. Aplin is loadingmore baguettes into the oven,and classic rock is playing onthe radio.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Cliffside Hearth: 3047 Kingston Rd.in Cliffcrest Plaza; 416-261-1010
FOOD
The city’s best buns are in the ’burbsThe finest little bakery in the GTA may be Scarborough’s Cliffside, where a husband-and-wife team still craft handmade loaves
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PETER SCOWEN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
David Aplin is a scholar of bread’s ‘noble past’; his wife, Camelia Proulx, quit managing a restaurant to open Cliffside. DEBORAH BAIC/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Awhite glass table that seemsto run to the vanishing point
of infinity; pompadour-styledchairs, outlandishly carved andheavily spray-painted in whiteresin; black candelabras dottingthe tabletop and metal globessuspended overhead – all are setlike props of enchantment in anarrow courtyard. Here is one ofToronto’s secret spaces: A setpiece of decadence and surreal-ism, hardly what you wouldexpect from a typical condomini-um lobby in Toronto’s King Westwarehouse district.
Alice in Wonderland could hap-pily frolic here. Design illusionsand a twisted sense of scale –outdoors, white planters lushlyplanted with burning bushshrubs rise two metres high – arewhat clearly intrigued Frenchpowerhouse Philippe Starckwhen he sketched a design forthe interior lobby and its narrowatrium at Seventy5 Portland.Commissioned by Freed Devel-opments, the dominant builderof mid-rise condominiums in theKing West area, Mr. Starck sat ina corner and sketched his ideafor the atrium during a meetingwith his production designhouse, Yoo, and the condomini-um architect, Charles Gane ofCore Architects. “The courtyardhad already been set out interms of its dimensions andheight,” says Mr. Gane, recallingthe meeting with Mr. Starck inLondon. “He sketched for aboutan hour, coming up with a longtable half in the lobby and halfout. That really became thegenesis of his design. It seemedthat he conceived of the wholeproject while sitting off in hiscorner.”
The interior courtyard mea-sures only 11 metres wide with 10storeys of condominiums risingabove. Facing east, the space is
naturally enlivened during theday by morning light. But theconscious artifice of the Starckdesigns, the ironic flashback tothe Belle Époque, the way thatthe chairs have been heavilyspray-painted with resin as ifroyal thrones from Versailles hadbeen plastic-wrapped and flash-frozen in time, all of this lends adeliciousness to the space. Itopens up to possibilities. What awelcome treatment it is, espe-cially considering the formulaicdesigns (an amoeba-shaped glasstable, a couch by Mies van derRohe, a white shag carpet) thatbeat most condominium groundfloors into submission.
Seventy5 Portland distinguishesitself with its lively white facadeand glass-fronted, cantileveredbalconies suspended intimatelyover the street. The condomini-um, which houses about 250people and includes a 2,000-square-foot penthouse now onthe market for approximately$2.4-million, recently won the2011 PUG Awards best new resi-dential building. A flash of yel-low, the only concession tocolour, is emblazoned over thefront entrance and repeatedagain within the front entrancehall. (Mr. Starck has long pro-moted the eerie tones of yellowand green, starting with his icon-ic Café Costes in Paris during themid-1980s and including NewYork’s Hudson Hotel.) A massiveglass sheet hovers just inside thefront lobby entrance, the betterto enlarge the space and reflectthe play of colour, while, next tothe concierge desk, a big glassdoor seems to cut the epic tablein half. Rolled away, the tableand plasticized, gaudy chairsreveal a courtyard theatre, ripefor anybody willing to match Mr.Starck’s obsession with love,romance and urban wit.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ARCHITECTURE
Enchanted courtyard is one of Toronto’s secret treasuresThe Philippe Starck-designed space on Portland Street is playful and surreal, miles away from the usual moribund condo design
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Shades of Alice in Wonderland: Anoversized table appears to extendthrough a glass door, above, andinto the outdoor courtyard atSeventy5 Portland, a condo byFreed Developments that hasdistinguished itself from other KingWest spaces. MICHELLE SIU/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
LISA ROCHON. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
