Delicious Dark Chocolate Croissants at the Bakehouse
A wonderful, wow-evoking culinary improvement
This past Sunday morning, around maybe 10 o’clock, I was working on this e-news, and I realized I would be wise to walk down to the Bakeshop from the Coffee Company to get a couple of our remarkable Chocolate Croissants. I long ago learned how much it helps me to literally be tasting whatever it is that I’m writing about right as I’m doing the writing. In the context of what we’ve come to think of here as Natural Law of Business #9—“Success means you get better problems”—I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by what I found: although it was only midmorning, we were already sold out!
The momentum for these delicious dark Chocolate Croissants, I can tell, is building. As Jen Stevenson, owner of the wonderful new Courageous Books in nearby Dexter, told me the other morning, “When you come early, they’re still melty. And they’re so delicious!”
The Bakehouse’s pains au chocolat, as chocolate croissants are called in French, have always been really good, but in the last couple years, a pair of great quality upgrades have taken them to the next level. First, we changed the chocolate to the Nicaragua bean-to-bar dark chocolate from the folks at French Broad Chocolate in Asheville, North Carolina. And then last year, we began to make the croissants with old-school cultured butter from Vermont Creamery. Now they are truly, to Jen Stevenson’s point, out of this world! And as Amy Emberling, longtime co-managing partner at the Bakehouse, was telling me, they have quietly grown into one of our top sellers—which, of course, I discovered firsthand when I tried to score one on Sunday morning. (Don’t worry: Amy told me today she’s already increased the shop’s croissant order for next weekend!)
What makes that Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter so good? Well, as with most everything we work with, the answer is world-class raw materials and proper process. The former means exceptionally good cream from farms that surround Vermont Creamery’s artisan plant in Websterville, Vermont. In terms of process, it’s going back to the way great butter was made 150 years ago. Cream was allowed to rise naturally to the top of milk and then “ripen,” or develop natural cultures, much as yogurt or cheese would. The cultured cream is then churned into butter that is far more flavorful. Higher butterfat helps, too!
The impact on the croissants? Like with the biscuits and the butterscotch pudding at the Roadhouse, where we use the same stellar cultured butter, what was already widely loved rose to new heights of flavor, and of aroma as well—when you break one open and put your nose up close, you’ll almost immediately smell the difference. The flavor is more buttery, more complex, and more compelling—long after I finish eating one, I can still taste how terrific it was!
Chocolate croissants are one of the richest ways to enjoy the classic combination of bread and chocolate. As Patricia Wells once wrote, “Croissant-like pain au chocolat was the preferred after-school snack for the more bourgeois Parisians.” Unlike so many other morning pastries, the Bakehouse’s Chocolate Croissants are really not sweet, but rather buttery, rich, and wonderfully tasty. Full-flavored bread and dark chocolate come together in the best possible way. The bitterness of the chocolate, the creaminess of the butter, the flakiness of the delicate layers of the pastry—it all combines to make for a pretty darned remarkable bit of eating! The balance is beautiful, with just enough salt to bring out the flavors of the other ingredients. The finish, I will add, is lovely, with lots of surprising low notes from the dark chocolate.
How good are these croissants? I went back to the Bakeshop on Monday morning, happily arriving in time to buy one. I figured I’d eat one bite, maybe two. Fifteen minutes later (and just as many napkins—it’s hard to type with chocolate all over your fingers), it was almost gone! The Chocolate Croissants pair up beautifully with the Tanzania coffee that’s this month’s Roaster’s Pick at the Coffee Company (which I wrote about recently here). If you like chocolate and orange (those dark chocolate–covered orange slices we have from Dubai are delicious), put some small-batch orange marmalade on top. Or if you want to create an in-the-moment version of chocolate-covered strawberries, add on a spoonful of the amazing American Spoon Early Glow Strawberry Preserves!
Swing by the Bakehouse, Deli, or Roadhouse and enjoy the flaky, all-butter croissant dough wrapped around this carefully crafted dark chocolate. The famous 20th-century French singer Charles Aznavour said it best: “Like a gift from heaven, exquisite delicacies, the little pains au chocolat …”
