Bakery Pompette : A Taste of France on College Street

On a quiet stretch of College Street in Little Italy, between the bustle of cocktail bars and trattorias, there’s a small bakery that smells exactly like every morning should. Bakery Pompette, or BQ Pompette, as regulars call it, is a true French-style neighbourhood bakery: a place to come pick up your daily bread and pastries, not to linger over a coffee. There may be a stool or two by the window, but make no mistake about its identity. This is a grocery bakery in the European tradition, where the croissants are golden and shattering, the sourdough has had a full 24 hours to develop its character, and the crème caramel tells a story that begins three doors down, at a cocktail bar.

A Bakery Born from Bread

The idea for Bakery Pompette came naturally. Before there was a bakery, there was bread: house-made bread, baked every day for the dining room at Pompette, the French-inspired restaurant that co-owners Martine Bauer, Jonathan Bauer-Monneret, and Maxime Hoerth opened on the same street in 2020. When they added Bar Pompette to the group, demand for the bread doubled. The kitchen got tight. And when a space opened up just a few doors down, the bakery was the obvious next step.

“Our bread is signature,” says Martine Bauer. “Clients who come to the restaurant know the bread. And when they go buy it at the bakery, it’s the same bread.”

Today, Bakery Pompette produces three types of sourdough (spelt, seed loaf, and baguette) all given a long 24-hour fermentation. The shelves fill each morning with pure butter croissants, pains au chocolat, almond croissants, escargots, and seasonal Danish pastries that rotate with the calendar. It’s the kind of place where you stop in, pick up a baguette and a couple of pastries, and head back home or to the office.

The People Behind the Flour

The three partners behind the Pompette Group are no strangers to the highest levels of French hospitality. Martine Bauer, originally from Mauritius, trained in hotel management before working at the one-Michelin-starred Royal Monceau in Paris and serving as private chef at Matignon, the official residence of the French Prime Minister. Jonathan Bauer-Monneret won the title of Meilleur Sommelier de France in 2014, while working as chef sommelier at Spring in Paris. Maxime Hoerth earned the prestigious Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF) distinction in 2011, notably the very first barman to receive the honour in that category, at just 25 years old.

The three arrived in Toronto with the dream of opening their own place. They fell in love with the city during a summer visit, and by 2020, they had set down roots in Little Italy. At the bakery, it’s Martine who oversees everything on the food side, bringing the same precision she honed in Michelin kitchens to laminated dough and seasonal pastries.

A Closed-Loop Kitchen

The croissants at Bakery Pompette are made with European-style butter and organic flour from Quebec. Martine insists on sourcing locally wherever possible: dairy comes from nearby farms, and in the summer months, seasonal produce from local partners makes its way into savoury Danishes and special items.

But what makes this bakery truly special is how connected it is to the rest of the Pompette universe. The crème caramel (silky, wobbly, deeply caramelized) was born at the restaurant, where it started as a clever way to use the surplus egg yolks generated by Bar Pompette’s cocktail program. (The bar goes through a staggering amount of egg whites.) Rather than waste them, the yolks get sent down the street and turned into one of the bakery’s best-sellers.

The same philosophy extends to citrus: Bar Pompette sends its lemon zests to the bakery before juicing them for cocktails. Banana peels from the bakery’s banana bread become syrup at the bar. It’s a tight, thoughtful circuit that minimizes waste and maximizes flavour across all three addresses.

“We try to work in a short loop,” Martine explains. “We use products to their maximum to limit loss and waste.”

Seasons on the Shelf

The pastry selection shifts with the seasons, and that’s by design. In winter, expect apple. Spring brings rhubarb. Summer means strawberries, raspberries, and savoury items made with farm-fresh tomatoes. It’s a rhythm that keeps the bakers engaged and the regulars coming back to see what’s new.

“It’s very important for the bakers and pastry chefs to be able to change things up,” says Martine. “They shouldn’t be doing the same thing every single day.”

Bakery Pompette isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s doing something arguably harder: executing the classics with extraordinary care, using the best ingredients, and weaving it all into a larger story of community and sustainability. The fact that a croissant here connects to a cocktail three doors down, which connects to a sommelier’s wine list, which connects to a farm in Ontario, that’s the kind of thoughtfulness that turns a neighbourhood bakery into something truly special.

In a city where excellent bakeries are no longer rare, Bakery Pompette stands out by being deeply, unmistakably itself: a true French-style neighbourhood boulangerie, made for stopping in and bringing the goods home.

Written by Fabie Lubin
Photography by Bakery Pompette

Updated on May 11, 2026

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