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Let’s Eat: For this Sudbury bakery the delicate art of the perfect croissant is an obsession

Food writer Hugh Kruzel says the crescent-shaped French pastry looks like a smile, so put one (or three) in your face, especially the flaky, buttery perfection that is a Pinchman's croissant

How can yeast-leavened dough, butter and a 400F-degree oven result in such amazing creations?  Okay, there are a few more ingredients. Let’s not forget technique.  

Maybe a little chutzpah?

Allan McMullan, is the head baker at Pinchman’s Artisan Bakery and Café, but it wasn’t always so. 

“It was a happy accident,” McMullan said. “It had been about six months since last working as a graphic designer. My previous experience cooking in the restaurant business was quite literally from the last century.

“With plenty of time on my hands, I had been spending a lot of it hanging out at Petit Gateau (a bakery cafe that had been on Durham Street). Yoshi, the owner/baker, and I had talked about our mutual love of baking and food in general. She told me that the owner of Ripe restaurant was opening a bakery cafe in the South end and she encouraged me to apply for a job there.

“What did I have to lose? With no resume, except for a picture of some of my baking I headed off to Ripe for an interview … with no expectations of getting a job. For fun, I brought a croissant I had baked at home.”

As you have already surmised, McMullan was hired on the spot. 

“Marc Grotolli, the owner of Ripe and Pinchman’s, often jokes that the croissant is why I got the job,” McMullan said. He has stayed and grown with the business.

Some might say croissants are a breakfast item.  Certainly, it has always been a feature of the “Continental” in many European countries. For years, North Americans tried and failed at delivery of the “real” thing.  

What was it that made our baked goods less realistic?  Was it the little café table, the bistro chairs, the red and white checked tablecloths, and the sound of Boules in the village square that presented place and expressed what the French call ‘terroir’ or sense of place?

Crescent rolls are not croissants! Even though data indicates that almost half of the croissants now sold in France’s shops are baked from frozen, that true experience is best expressed at genuine boulangeries and patisseries. 

Variations include Pain aux raisins and Pain au chocolat. Buttery, flaky, with that “je ne sais quoi” the rolling and folding and layering of dough creates air spaces. It is similar to — but oh so different from — puff pastry.  

“Certainly since Pinchman’s has opened the croissant has been my main focus/obsession,” McMullan said. “They are a temperamental thing to perfect and every day is a challenge. The process is long and fraught with many chances to mess up. Why are ours different? For starters, we use butter. We don’t take any shortcuts. Start to finish the whole process takes about three days from making the dough to cutting the croissants by hand.

“Unfortunately, we sell out most of the time, so I often take fresh ones and put them in the fridge a while to firm up because the fresh ones are too flaky to cut. Do we make enough for the demand? We try to. We start the day by proofing and baking as many as we can and then try to gauge demand as the day goes on.

“How should you eat your croissant? Preferably immediately. But I have had some the next day and they’re still good. The next day they would be great cut open and broiled with some good cheese on each slice.  Is this elevating Sudbury’s baking options?

“We bake everything from scratch. We bake things that we’re excited about and we bake things no one else seems to. I personally love pain aux raisins, which is basically the croissant dough filled with rum and vanilla-soaked raisins and pastry cream.”

When asked “Do you have regulars who crave your croissants?” McMullan barely misses a beat.  “The No. 1 question is ‘Do you have any almond croissants left?’ ”

“A customer gushed when she ate our croissants for the first time: ‘You mean I don’t have to go to Montreal or Paris for a real croissant?’” McMullan said with some pride. “Someone sent us a message the other day saying it was her first time visiting and that she felt like she had got off a plane in Paris,”

Oh la la! Authentic croissants have arrived in Sudbury. 

Pinchman’s Artisanal Café and Bakery is located at 2037 Long Lake Rd.

Hugh Kruzel is a committed foodie and a freelance writer in Greater Sudbury.


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