The best bakeries in Canada, according to the bakers of The Great Canadian Baking Show

Even the biggest baking enthusiasts don't want to bake everything they eat. Every so often, they're happy to let someone else do the work.

After all, how do you discover new styles of baking, techniques and flavour combinations if you don't eat someone else's baking every once in a while?

We asked each of the bakers on The Great Canadian Baking Show about their favourite bakery — and why they love it. The result is a mouth-watering list of must-visit spots for breads, cakes, cookies and pastries that stretches from St. John's to Vancouver (also, one pizzeria).

Vancouver

Andrei: Terra Breads. It's the only place where I'll go to buy bread, if I don't make it. You can tell it's been proofed for a really long time. It's got a really well-developed flavour and a good crumb structure. It tastes like it's been made with wild yeasts, so it's not yeasty.

St. John's

Ann Marie: When I get the opportunity to go down east — where my family is, in St. John's — I absolutely love the toutons at the Bagel Café. A touton is fried bread dough. You can eat it by itself, with some molasses, whatever you want. It's amazing if you do an eggs benedict and put that inside your touton.

Toronto

Mengling: Toronto is so multicultural. [With] the variety that we have here, we get to taste so many things. I have a list of favourite bakeries: Roselle, Le Délice, Butter Avenue, Bake Code, Sweet à la Mode — they just opened and the owner is so nice, I'm going back for my third time — Craque de Crème, they specialize in crème brulée. There are so many!

Edmonton (everybody loves Duchess Bake Shop)

Megan: We have a place called Duchess Bake Shop in Edmonton. Their macarons are unbeatable. People line up [for] hours and hours to get into this place.

Timothy: Whenever I go to Duchess Bake Shop, I'm always like "OK, I'm spending $30, max." And I never stay in budget. Everything just looks so good, I want to buy one of everything.

Sadiya: The one thing that my hometown should be really proud of in terms of baking is that we've got the Duchess Bake Shop. Their baked goods, their croissants, their macarons are just beautiful and their raspberry rose lemonade just hits the right spot on a hot day.

Regina (and Wadena, Sask.)

Devon: In Regina, there's the Green Spot Café. They have the best sticky buns, like gooey cinnamon buns. I used to live [near] there and I would go three, four times a week to get sticky buns. They're so good.

And the Wadena Bakery. Wadena is this tiny town in Saskatchewan, but their bakery is insane. Their lemon poppy seed loaf is so good.

Windsor

Tim: Right now I'm in Brockville, but originally I'm from the Windsor, Ontario area. Windsor is known for their pizza. Windsor pizza is the best pizza in Canada. Anyone who's from Windsor, or has been to Windsor, knows what I'm talking about. I go to Antonino's. It's the first thing I gotta do when I visit home; get to Antonino's, get a pizza, get it into you, with a nice cold beer.

Cornwall, P.E.I.

Wendy: There's a bakery in Cornwall that has the best cinnamon rolls you'll have east of Montreal. Maybe in all of Canada. The bakery's name is Mary's Bakery. 

Halifax

Sachin: Well, being from Nova Scotia, apples are our thing. We grow some beautiful apples in the valley, and I've gotta say, I've tasted some of the best apple pies in my hometown.