The Blue Duck Bakery Cafe

Everything the Blue Duck makes is really great, but there are some things that they do so well it always keeps me coming back. One: their sunflower bread. Perfect toasted in the morning with berry preserves. Mmm. Just delicious and so fresh & crispy every time. Their cakes are also something special. Tried their red velvet and chocolate fudge, both were rich and delicious. It is undoubtedly the best bakery in Southold with all of its sugary and yeasty goodness. A Southold staple.

Here’s a no-​frills bakery that doesn’t care to create every single kind of cookie and cake heard of. What you’ll find here is a slightly-​smaller selection of cookies and pastries but you just can’t help but feel like everything was made with love and care. I had a flaky apple pastry and an authentic duck cookie. The apple pastry was incredible, simply incredible. The pastry crust was indeed flaky and wonderful, the apples tasted like they had been picked in the morning, and the duck cookie was a pleasant sugar cookie with a unique hardened blue sugar coating on top.
TL;DR Get the flaky apple pastry if you’ve ever enjoyed apple pie because this is like having one in your own little personal pastry.

I’ve recently heard a lot about the Blue Duck Bakery Café from several friends and had the wonderful opportunity to meet some members of the family at the Lenz Winery Farmer’s Market last week. I’ve never been to the bakery nor have I ever seen it, which surprised me as I’m on the NoFo quite often. I now know where it is and plan on being a regular… Here’s what went down for the carb debauchery (you all KNOW I love carbs, especially sweet carbs):
Sweet Carbs:
+ Linzer Tart. It’s one of my favorite types of cookies and usually is a good measure of how good a bakery is. Blue Duck’s linzer tart was the way it should be, the cookie was extremely flaky, the top had a nice even layer of confectioner’s sugar and the filling was a nice «not overly sweet» berry-​esque filling which to me was tasted like it was comprised mostly of raspberries. Thankfully, there’s wasn’t overly seed-​y as many other linzer tarts I’ve had end up being extremely seed-​y and it becomes annoying to eat as the little raspberry seeds are stuck in your teeth!
+ Raspberry Rugulach. When I first moved to LI back in ’92, there used to be a bakery called «Cheese N Stuff» in Setauket that made the best rugulach I’ve ever had in my life. It’s also what probably contributed to me being a chubby growing boy… anyhow, Blue Duck’s Raspberry rugulach was damn good. It was flaky yet «creamy» (YES folks, rugulach if done correctly, should have an extremely flaky almost creamy sensation to it) and the filling was very good. My only critique on this was that I prefer a much heaver sugar+cinnamon topping and it was a bit light on the topping LOL. I LOVE SWEET THINGS! :)
+ Crispy Apple Turnover. My father loved apple turnovers and so I was grandfathered in to loving them too. They had 2 types, shortbread and flaky. I opted for the flaky version and boy was it fantastic… If I remember correctly, it had icing on top which was oh so sweet, the apple filling inside was chunky, smooth, and sweet but not TOO sweet. It was done quite well and it was flaky, the way they should be.
Non-​Sweet Carbs:
+ Ciabatta. Thanks to Ina Garten, I’ve become a huge fan of ciabattas and Blue Duck’s was right on point. The shape was long, wide and had the proper height and irregular shape that I like for ciabattas. I usually don’t like when they look like they’ve come off the Pepperide Farm factory line… artisan breads should have a little bit of a rustic/​irregular look and feel to them. The inside wasn’t overly doughy and was awesome with my homemade rosemary olive oil, lava salt and black pepper.
I ate all of this in 5 – 10 minutes, ALL IN ONE SITTING, and went on my merry way. I highly recommend Blue Duck as it’s the best bakery I’ve been to recently and certainly is the best bakery on the East end of Long Island.
On a side note, I also came here to disspell rumors from 3 – 4 people that I know, who’ve told me that Blue Duck uses frozen dough for their bread and that it isn’t made fresh. I know my carbs folks and as far as I can tell, their bread is made from fresh dough daily and in fact was confirmed by me based on the taste of the bread. Frozen dough has a distinct characteristic to it with the staleness/​flatness that you get upon baking it… I’ve also confirmed with the bakery owners that this indeed is NOT true!
GO to Blue Duck for your carb fixations.
THIS has been a review by Gaurav