Just discovered Hygge Bakery, a Danish bakery in downtown Los Angeles!

My heart is racing a little bit faster after just discovering Hygge Bakery, a Danish bakery in downtown Los Angeles. Several years ago, I studied abroad in Denmark and immediately fell in serious love with their bakeries. And to make my separation from the country even more difficult, I lived with a Danish family whose matriarch was a baker. To this day, I still keep in touch with her, and frequently have daydreams about the creations that came from her oven. It was a pretty blissful existence: even with the chilly weather, how could one ever complain knowing that at the end of the train commute from Copenhagen (school) to Roskilde (home), freshly baked homemade cinnamon rolls awaited you at the kitchen table?

Now a resident of Los Angeles, I've tried to keep the Danish culture in my life by going to Scandinavian events, including the Annual Scandinavian film festival that happens in Beverly Hills each year. But my heart always aches a little bit, to be back in Denmark, and to get another taste of the culture I fell in love with.

I won't get a chance to get to downtown to try Hygge until after the Thanksgiving holiday. But the idea of a bakery named Hygge already resonates with this bakery hunter: Hygge, Danes will tell you, is something we can't necessarily translate into American terminology, but a concept that is a huge part of Danish culture. Some web writers out there have taken a stab at the definition, so if you're curious to read about Hygge, check out this link at The Hygge House website, some musings over at The Danish Web, or if you'd like the Hygge 101 version, this travel article encourages you to "Hygge it out in Denmark." Better yet, just go to Denmark and enjoy the breathtaking baked goods and hygge for yourself.

Bakery hunting on the silver screen...

Stranger than Fiction, starring the great Will Ferrell, is a flick for every bakery hunter to watch. Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, a baker named Ana Pascal, is Ferrell's love interest. As their relationship develops, it makes for some great bakery movie moments.

The movie has one of the greatest romantic gestures I've ever seen. When Ferrell goes to tell the baker how he feels about her, he walks up to her holding a brown box with several brown sacks inside. The purpose of this box is totally unclear to movie viewers, until he announces: "I brought you some flours".

Later on in the movie, after Ferrell ends up in the hospital, Gyllenhaal brings him Bavarian sugar cookies to cheer him up in his time of need.

The narrator of Stranger than Fiction leaves us with this lovely idea:

“Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies and fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or a subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys, and nose-plugs, and uneaten danish, and soft spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days are in fact here for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives.”--Stranger than Fiction

The movie captures all that is great about appreciating baked goods, and as a result, captures all that is great about the little things in life-- a good piece of fiction, a chance encounter on a bus, Bavarian sugar cookies, and quirky Will Ferrell films.

Denmark and Canada face off...

Ever heard of Hans Island? Denmark and Canada are both claiming the island as their own by hoisting flags, representing with warships, and even burying bottles of brandy in the ground. And according to the Associated Press, both Canadians and Danes have taken out competing Google Ads proclaiming sovereignty over the rock. The disagreement has even led some Canadians to call for a ban on Danish pastries, which leads The Great American Bakery Hunt to ask: Aren't they only punishing themselves?