Or, more specifically, Bakery That Most Reminds Me of the Ones I

Or, more specifically, Bakery That Most Reminds Me of the Ones I Grew Up With. Pike Place Bakery keeps a low profile, even though it’s at the Market’s central crossroads, right where Pike Street bends into Pike Place. Tucked into a corner behind the fish-throwers (ah, that explains it), its glass cases are stuffed with rolls and breads, yes, but mostly old-school sweets: doughnuts, turnovers, danishes, brownies, macaroons, cookies, cannoli, eclairs, cream puffs, baklava, bismarcks, and pershings, most of them filled with custard or jelly. Their philosophy seems to be never to use one topping on a sweet roll when you can use more: cream cheese strawberry, chocolate-chip cream cheese, almond cinnamon caramel. The “Texas” doughnuts are a good eight inches across; the raspberry bear claw literally is the size of an ursine paw. It’s like a few square feet of the Midwest dropped into Seattle—with the accompanying mind-set, which counts pennies thriftily and calories never. One of those lavishly puffy bismarcks is only $1.50. GAVIN BORCHERT 1501 Pike Place, 682-2829, pikeplacebakery.com