With the launch of our website, we had a flurry of submissions for bakeries to review. Perhaps one of the most popular places we’d been advised to visit was Home Grain Bakery in Aldinga. Aldinga is on the way to one of our favourite holiday spots: Deep Creek, and the bakery isn’t far off the main road. However, multiple attempts to visit this bakery had been thwarted by empty dessert shelves after a lunchtime rush. Yet, this past week we were in luck! There remained on the shelves three circle donuts, one with sprinkles, and a handful of jam-filled Berliners to try.
Home Grain Bakery sits with a quaint collection of shops, with lovely red brick and stone buildings with shaded verandas. It’s an attractive bakery to behold and even in the cool winter was warmed by the sun. You climb up to a wooden deck to reach the bakery, giving an olde Aussie, country-town vibe. Even though we were there later in the day, we still had to wait our turn in the queue as families with eager children made their orders.
Old Coach Road, AldingaView on Map
Our choice, from the limited donuts remaining, were well portioned and sat heavily in our little, brown bags. Not venturing far we enjoyed them in the weakening afternoon sun. My donut was good, however, my husband’s donut was far better. He got the strawberry jam Berliner which was phenomenal. The dough was cooked to perfection; it was soft and melted in your mouth. A large blob of delicious strawberry jam, unashamed of its seeds and bits, graced the centre. I began to get some donut envy as I made my way through my own sprinkle-topped dough.
There was something interesting about the donut I had, which took a while to figure out. Eventually, we reached the same conclusion – the donut tasted distinctively like a finger bun! The dough flavour, the texture and the thicker, vanilla icing all seemed so finger bun-like, yet, donut-ty in expression. It wasn’t anything I was opposed to, I love a finger bun, but perhaps not the most ideal donut material.
