The Grain is a small bakery and café on Clayton Road in Clayton, a street replete with other small…read morebakeries, cafés and restaurants.
My experience is limited to what they had on offer for takeaway, so I cannot speak to their café offerings. Given this experience, though, I would not want to try anything else.
I purchased two Kaiser rolls from The Grain and two large pieces of baklava. Neither of these are particularly difficult to make, or at the very least there are many more elaborate and intricate breads and desserts one could make.
The first tell of the impending disappointment was the shape of the Kaiser rolls. What makes a Kaiser roll distinctive is the five segments of the top bun. These can be made by folding the dough prior to baking (the traditional method), by cutting the dough after it has risen, or by using a purchased tool to do this. The rolls from The Grain had a faint trace of these distinctive lines, but this was marked by tears in the dough. The rolls themselves were dry and hard and completely inedible except for a pinch or two of soft bread in the centre. It was almost impossible to bit into the roll, and even when this was possible the bread was so dry and flavourless that there wasn't much point to trying to eat it. The most satisfying part to the rolls were the dull thud they made as they hit the bottom of my rubbish bin.
The other item I sampled from The Grain was their baklava. Baklava is actually really easy to make, it just takes a lot of time to assemble. This also makes it easy to tell a good baklava from a poor one without even trying. A well made baklava has alternative layers of pastry and walnuts (which are mixed with sugar or honey). This is time consuming because the pastry layers are thing and require some care, they have to be wiped with oil or butter, and you have to be careful to spread the nuts evenly. If you were being lazy, you could put two thick layers of nut mixture between thick layers of pastry, as The Grain did. You still have the same amount of nuts and pastry, they're just lumped together. The problem with this is that it makes the pastry incredibly tough. I found it difficulty to cut the pastry with a fork--something that is difficult enough in a properly constructed baklava, let alone one with walls of pastry--and trying to bite through it wasn't much more successful.
The next problem with the baklava was the nuts used. Traditionally one uses walnuts, or perhaps pecans if walnuts are not available, with pistachio as a garnish. I am no purist who requires walnuts, some of the best baklava I have had have been reimaginings using ingredients that were not available in the near east when the dessert first emerged. But, if you're already being lazy in the construction, it is not appropriate to substitute walnuts for almonds. The only reason to do this would be to cut costs given how much cheaper almonds are, which was not reflected in the very streep asking price ($4/piece). The use of almonds, the cheap construction and tough pastry all combine to make a truly terrible baklava.
Given what I have experience of The Grain, this is one bakery/café to be avoided.
