you’ve asked and i’ve answered! after my last episode of foodstuffs presents here in paris, i asked viewers what they’d like to see more of. requests for croissants came knocking on my inbox, one after another. so here we are! i took the subway on over to east paris — home to the very trendy and bustling “le marais” and bastille neighborhoods — to check out two of the most well-known bakeries in paris.
ride along with me to see which croissant wins out and what bakery you should bookmark for your next trip to paris.
blé sucré(11th arr, bastille) 7 Rue Antoine Vollon, 75012 Paris, open 7am-730pm tuesday-sunday
du pain et des idées(in between 10th and 3rd arr, république) 34 Rue Yves Toudic, 75010 Paris, open 645am-8pm weekdays only
blé sucré’s croissant (left), du pain et des idées (right)
blé sucré’s croissant, exterior
blé sucré’s croissant, interior
du pain et des idées’ croissant, exterior
du pain et des idées’ croissant, interior
blé sucré’s croissant (top), du pain et des idées (bottom)
hello people!! i write to you this week with a very exciting post: my first ever bakery crawl!
what’s a bakery crawl you may ask? well for those of you familiar with its drunken cousin, the pub crawl, a bakery crawl functions similarly as an extended time spent hopping around to different bakeries.
on my very first bakery crawl, i visited 10 bakeries. in 1 day. so you better be hungry, because you’re about to watch a whole lot of sweets!
arcade bakery (tribeca) 220 church st, new york, ny 10013, open 8am-4pm mon-fri
what i bought: seeded laminated baguette, and lemon sugar brioche
maman (tribeca) 211 w broadway, new york, ny 10013, open 7am-6pm mon-fri and 8am-6pm sat, sun
what i bought: chocolate pistachio croissant
dominique ansel bakery (soho) 189 spring st, new york, ny 10012, open 8am-7pm mon-sat and 9am-7pm sun
what i bought: dka (dominique’s kouign amann)
mah-ze-dahr (west village) 28 Greenwich Ave, New York, NY 10011, open 7am-6pm mon-fri and 8am-6pm sat, sun
what i bought: sadly mah-ze-dahr was closed for a private event but i have tasted their chocolate chip cookie and ice cream before, both delicious!
aux merveilleux de fred (meatpacking) 37 8th ave, new york, ny 10014, open 8am-7:30pm everyday
what i bought: “the incredible” a speculoos meringue, covered in whipped cream and white chocolate shavings, and “the wonderful” a meringue with chocolate whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings
momofuku milk bar (chelsea) 220 8th ave, new york, ny 10011, open 8am-11pm mon-thurs and 8am-12am fri-sun
what i bought: b’day cake truffles
sullivan street bakery (chelsea) 236 9th ave, new york, ny 10011, open 7am-4pm mon-fri and 8am-4pm sat, sun
what i bought: garlic stretchy
breads bakery (union square) 18 east 16th st, new york, ny 10003, open 6:30am-9pm mon-sat and 7:30am-8pm sun
what i bought: reverse chocolate chip cookie
zucker bakery (east village) 433 east 9th st, new york, ny 10009, open 8am-6pm mon-fri and 9am-7pm sat, sun
what i bought: yin-yang black and white cookie
supermoon bakehouse (lower east side) 120 rivington st, new york, ny 10002, open 8am-5pm everyday
hi friends. welcome to foodstuffs, my new blog!!! i hope you’re eating something good today.
it’s been a while since i last wrote and i’m so happy to be back at it. why don’t we play a little catch up…
my old blog chronicled six months spent abroad eating in peru. it was there that i took my first cooking classes (in spanish 🙈), ate guinea pig, and told my friends and family all about peruvian cuisine via the interweb. i loved it! every sunday, i’d sit criss-cross applesauce on my bed and start typing and translating a peruvian recipe.
when i left peru, i went back to finish college in davidson, north carolina. to liven up the food scene there, i started working at summit coffee, baked my tail off, ate too much milk bread, and wrote a food column for the student paper. i even took a course in nutrition, which explains some of the way-too-damn-healthy recipes i have in my archives. i was lucky enough to land a summer internship at food52, the james-beard awarded culinary website, which led me to my first job out of school on their marketing team.
upon moving to new york city and starting life in the real world, my blogging fell off the wagon. i was busy! too busy! really, ask anyone who saw me my first six months in nyc. this was me. but now life has changed a bit! i just wrapped up two very full years in new york, and am living in washington, dc for the summer before heading to culinary school in paris this fall. you could say i’m excited.
i’m sure you’re wondering why dough pictures are just creeping onto your screen without any acknowledgment or explanation. that dough is the beginning of my very first croissant bake! in preparation for my summer job at bread furst, a fabulous, james-beard winning bakery in d.c. that you must visit, i made homemade croissants! jokes on me though because i am now weeks into my work at the bakery and i don’t actually bake the croissants. instead, i bake loaves and baguettes all day with the bread bakers (pastry bakers cover croissants).
regardless, i’m happy i made croissants from scratch because i learned that they take a very veryvery long time and are a hard thing to get right on your first try (#learning). i spent little time deciding on where to pull a croissant recipe. it was to be julia child’s croissants, the queen of french cooking (with english translation).
a quick google search pulled up this throwback video that made me appreciate how informational The French Chef was and what today’s cooking shows truly lack.
i followed julia’s recipe to a tee and recommend that if you want an authentic and true french croissant, you do the same. making the croissants took a full day so i’d bookmark this adventure for a rainy weekend. the actual mixing of the dough is simple and straight-forward, with the most difficult part of the recipe coming towards the very end of your day (after multiple hours of folding and waiting). this part is the forming of the isosceles triangles, which you immediately roll into crescent shape. they won’t be perfect but if mixed and folded correctly, your croissants will be truly impressive. not to mention, buttery and flaky upon opening. what’s better than that!
below you can find the recipe fixings, special tools, and link to instructions for making julia child’s croissants. i also included a couple quick croissant recipe suggestions in case time isn’t your friend these days.
and as you could guess from the title, this blog, while mainly about food, will also include snippets and tangents on other random happenings. here’s this week’s other stuff:
obsessed with (and basically want to eat) this lip balm in coconut (h/t my friend kate)
currently reading A Revolution in Taste by Susan Pinkard. fun fact: Susan is my mom’s best friend and her use of the word foodstuffs was an inspiration for my blog name!
*most of my recipes are original or adaptations. for those that aren’t, i refer you to the original source where you can legally access them!
**i’ve transferred all my peruvian and nutrition recipes and blog posts over to foodstuffs. (hence this being post 34). have fun looking through the archives!
CATHERINE KATE MARGARET 