The Most Exciting New Bakery in America Is Hiding in New Orleans — The Experts

This is our sweet claw. We run a sweet and a savory claw. The alligator claws are the newest addition to our menu. They mimic like a bear claw but they are representative of the south. For this one, it's toasted pecans that are chopped marzipan filling. Starting from the side that Jen's working on, just closing the alligator claws shut and then we'll follow up with like cutting the And then we are topping it with poppy seeds and the alligator pepper spice. They're gonna kind of assembly line. The alligator pepper spice has sort of like a Szechuan pepper like tongue numbing feeling sensation. It's from Cameron. It's like you almost can't really taste it but if you get a good chunk of it you're gonna know that it's there. It's supposed to be the one item that is seasonal but I don't really know how else you can change it and make it seasonal. It's kind of perfect. Lagniappe is a Creole term that we use here in Louisiana to mean a little something extra. It is kind of the perfect word to describe what we do here but I think when we're talking about food for a lot of New Orleanians, dessert is always lagniappe. I'm from New Orleans. My partner is from Cameroon from West Africa. We have found a lot of parallels and similarities both in our cuisine and our culture and we're trying to honor these ingredients through the pastries that we're working with. It's 5.04 and we are loading in all the main assortment for the morning. That includes the plain, chocolate, the beau croissant. This chunk of time is important because in about an hour everything's gonna start coming out. So if you miss you know even 15 minutes it will kind of set you back. No, we're good. Was it off? Cool, cool, cool, cool. That's the fun part about being in a house. Things are tripping. We joke about it. We have a friendly ghost here. Her name is Eunice and she's been holding us since day one but sometimes she's like no I gotta make sure you're awake. So sometimes the proofer might trip. But everything's set in the proofer now. We're gonna go upstairs as we're waiting for everything to prove. So I'm working on the corn muffin now. This is one of our signature items that we run only during corn season. I'm gonna sift this then we're gonna add our wets into here and then we'll add our corn last. I'm testing it today. We're gonna we're gonna bring it back on the menu next week but I just want to make sure that it's good. It's been a minute you know. Even from when I started the pop-up there's always been an emphasis on highlighting local seasonal ingredients. Hyper, hyper local but corn is very beautiful and it's something that I grew up eating a lot of. I wanted it to be some component without it just being cornbread. I mean I grew up having like the jiffy cornbread box which is nothing wrong with that. I love jiffy cornbread. That was sort of the basis for it. Now I am lining the muffin liners with the corn husk. This is gonna maintain all the moisture and just like be very delicious in that way. It peels off so easily from the corn husk rather than a muffin liner. You think about when you peel off a cupcake you gotta get some of that crumb outside of that. That's what I want. Like I want to have that entire thing. It's a little crispy on the bottom. Also it does bake differently from like a dehydrated corn muffin liner versus a fresh one. Corner coming in. So I'm finishing these off with some turbinado sugar before they go in the oven. They'll go in for 15 or so minutes. So we're getting started on the first round of the bake off. This is our makeshift egg wash machine. It's great just because it gives an even spray. We use the machine for efficiency and consistency and then get these pastry pucks. One is a pastry cream puck. One is a sweet potato puck. The more I feel like I can standardize the efficiency and the cleanliness of everything the easier it will be to scale up. The pastry cream will get finished with some jam and figs and then the sweet potato will get finished with collard greens. This collard green one is like been a staple. It's really delicious. So I'm pulling the corn muffins now. Right when these come out the oven they go onto the cooling tray. They sit in this muffin pan too long. They'll get a little soggy. The corn muffins have cooled. If they don't cool enough the butters is going to melt. So you really have to be patient with this. I'm going to pipe some of the honey butter on. This is clover butter, Acadiana honey, so a local honey with a little bit of salt. And then we pipe them sort of like a half moon crescent shape on top just to give it a little bit of pizzazz. Butter and cornbread are like a match made in heaven. Like they are meant to be a marriage together. We just finished piping all these on. We're going to taste another one before it goes out. I think what I like about it is like it's still really moist. Still pretty light. I think more honey in the honey butter. Yeah. I kind of like the idea of adding malt and salt on top. I think a few more tweaks on the base recipe for it but otherwise it's pretty solid. Lino and I are perfectly split between front of house and back of house. Lino's running the coffee program and making sure that the case maintains its integrity. I'm running back of house doing all of the pastry. We work a lot maintaining the integrity and consistency of things and getting more efficient. So this is the Grains of Paradise. It's one of our signature items on the menu. Cinnamon sugar filled. It's our take on like a cardamom bun. This is standard like yeasted dough and it has the filling already in it. Nina's sheeted it out, spread the filling, and then sort of like folded it together. So we're kind of creating like a laminated layer of filling and dough. And then now we're just gonna spread it thin so that we can cut it into strips. This was definitely inspired by like Swedish cardamom bun. That sort of style like a twisted roll. These get twisted in some way that I cannot explain other than that they get like a double twist around your fingers and then a double twist in front. And this is just our personal stylistic choice of shaping them like this. But I think the fun part too, your sort of like initiation into training and working here is to practice shaping them. But everyone has their own sort of way of doing it and you can also tell who's shaped which ones because they're slightly different but we're trying to make sure they're all exactly the same. Yeah like if they're tinier it's because someone has little tiny hands and it's really cute. So we've wrapped up that first batch. We're gonna get started on maybe the Vaux Croissant now. The Vaux Croissant is our take on a lattice sausage filled pastry. Something that you may find that may be like a pigs in a blanket but with croissant instead. These are the most complicated item on the menu I think to put together. We have tried different variations of it in terms of shaping it but what's working best right now is the one that's probably the most complicated version. Cutting individual rectangles and then making a sandwich out of it essentially. Vaux Croissant is now a four generation Creole sausage maker in New Orleans. We'll do Creole mustard sausage. When I was interested in doing this I was R&Ding it down the street from Vaux Croissant and I walked over there and I was just like I'm planning on doing this thing and like I'm gonna test something for you and I'm gonna bring it back and I'm just I didn't tell him what it was and I came back and he was like this is the best thing I've ever eaten in my life with a sausage like holy heck what did you do. The technique is to not smush in but to you want the the layers to meet together to like kiss and it's one thing that like my fingers are sort of like flipping like this as opposed to just like pressing and pinching. I'm really making sure that the pastry is closed so that these two layers are side by side and not smushed. So it's 7 30. We have our huddle in 15 minutes. This is the time of the morning when we're trying to get the last little finishings on. Taz is putting orange zest on the grains. Nina's about to do the second part of the Vaux Croissant. This is the hot sausage. I think that's kind of where we are. There's a lot going on between 6 to 7 really 6 to 8 and even into the 9 a.m time all the baking is happening. Nigel's coming in with our coffee. This is also a very important part of the morning. It's the most important part of the morning. This is actually the most important part of the morning. We are not alive. Yeah as uh the barista's dialing in the coffee for the morning. Uh kitchen thank you. Thank you. Yay kitchen gets our coffees. Yeah I always get a cortado every morning. This is the best part of the morning I'm not gonna lie. We knew opening in the beginning where we sort of wanted to foreshadow into the next five years but of course that changes when you open but I think where I see myself personally is to continue to invest in the city and I think what has become an important part of the work that I'm doing personally is sort of like honoring the women that have come before me that have made New Orleans what it is. When a guest comes in I want it to feel like a safe space where you can feel comfortable you can sit down have your meeting or sit outside and like sit under this beautiful tree that is telling so many stories. I want people to feel like they have a community here right small or big in New Orleans and in Central City. I just want them to leave feeling full of really good pastries.