This Ottawa bakery makes classic and creative Greek pastries, including brownie-stuffed baklava

L to R: Christina Papadopoulos, Anna Papadopoulos and Leni Papadopoulos from the Nutty Greek Bake Shop in Ottawa. Photo by Jean Levac /PostmediaArticle content

Nutty Greek Bake Shop

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490 Rochester St. (entrance is on Beech Street), 613-680-0806, nuttygreek.com

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A selection of baked goods from the Nutty Greek Bake Shop in Ottawa. Photo by Jean Levac /PostmediaArticle content

Open: Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday

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When it comes to sweet treats at the Nutty Greek Bake Shop, the choice can boil down to a pastry as it’s made in Greece or its created-in-Ottawa cousin.

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Take its bougatsa, a pillow-shaped phyllo pastry for one with a creamy, custardy filling, which for me is the main attraction at Ottawa’s only Greek bakery.

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The origins of bougatsas go back centuries. While they’re native to northern Greece, regional variations of bougatsas can be more or less creamy, and more or less sweet, or even savoury. Specialty shops called bougatsadika or bougatsopolia, sell only bougatsa.

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Horio Bougatsa (L) and Bougatsa from the Nutty Greek Bake Shop in Ottawa. Photo by Jean Levac /PostmediaArticle content

In Ottawa, at this from-scratch bakery that marks its 13th anniversary this month, the bougatsa ($4.25) reflect the recipes and flavours of Greece’s Peloponnese region in the south of the country, where its owners and operators, the Papadopoulos family, came from.

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Two kinds of bougatsas here are traditional. The most traditional bougatsa, which is also the most popular of the bakery’s bougatsas, is dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon and filled with a perfectly textured, not-too-sweet, vanilla custard. The other one, called a “horio bougatsa,” is topped with sesame seeds and has a bit of manouri cheese inside with its custard, so that sweet and savoury mingle.

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Then there are the bougatsas that Eleni Papadopoulos calls “non-traditional,” which include flavours such as apple caramel, cherry, blueberry, chocolate and lemon ricotta.

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“That’s my sister and I going a little crazy,” Eleni Papadopoulos says.

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You won’t find bougatsas like these in Greece, or in other Greek bakeries, Papadopoulos says. It took some persuading, she adds, to win over her traditionalist father Thanasi and mother, Christina. They are all co-owners of the business, and Christina is ever-present in the bakery’s kitchen, preparing, mixing, baking and overseeing.

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The same choice between tradition and innovation can be seen in the section of the bake shop’s showcase dedicated to baklava.

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Brownie Baklava and Baklava (in triangle) from the Nutty Greek Bake Shop in Ottawa. Photo by Jean Levac /PostmediaArticle content

Traditional Greek baklava ($4.25) here is massive, multi-layered, walnut-y and honey syrup-soaked. But Papadopoulos and her sister Anna, who are Ottawa-born, wanted their own spin on a traditional chocolate baklava. To that end, they mashed a chocolate brownie in between slices of their mother’s baklava and doused the whole thing in honey-infused syrup. Somehow, the brownie baklava won their mother’s approval and it has been a favourite of customers for years, Papadopoulos says.