Croissants & Kouign Amann: Pure Decadence

Albany Patch takes a look at the people behind the . Jamie Hansen from Oakland had plans to open up an ice cream shop. But when she bumped into pastry chef Brian Wood, her life took an unexpected turn towards decadent pastries. 

Where is your company based?

is based out of Oakland. We’re sort of on the edge of Emeryville, close to Pixar Studios.

How is it going so far at the Albany farmers market?

It’s actually been really good. Typically we’re kind of close to selling out every week. And we’ve got a few people that come back every week for our stuff.

What do you usually bring to Albany’s farmers market?

We usually bring a combination of our croissants. We do five different types of croissants, including butter, chocolate, almond, spinach, feta, ham and cheese. We also bring our specialty product, it’s called kouign amann. It’s a pastry from Brittany. It’s kind of mixture of a croissant and a palmier. It’s made with salted butter so it’s salty and sweet and it’s got a caramel crust on the bottom. It’s Celtic, it means butter cake. It’s pretty decadent.

What are the most popular items? 

The kouign amann is typically the thing people ask for. It’s gotten a lot of good press lately so people very often come and they’re like, "I don’t know how to say it but I think I want that!" We typically sell out of most of our croissants pretty quickly as well as our baguettes. Of the breads the multigrain sourdough is our most popular. We’re already sold out. And then the quiche has kind of a cult following, there are some people that come every week for the quiche.

Where does the inspiration for these pastries come from?

My business partner’s a pastry chef and he’s been focused primarily on French pastry for a long time. He used to work at the San Francisco Baking Institute. He actually co-authored a cookbook and wrote all the chapters on particular types of pastries. So when we decided to open the bakery the kouign amann was sort of the specialty that we decided to go with.

I was originally going to open up an ice cream shop and when I met Brian Wood he said, "Oh I’m a pastry chef." We started planning on just doing wholesale and then hoping that we could get into a couple farmers markets. And then right now we have about 10 wholesale customers but by next week we’ll have about 13. We really didn’t expect to have that until the end of the year. Things have been going really well.

How did you get connected to Albany farmers market?

Actually through Hodo Soy Bean Company. They did not end up coming to this market but they participated in a number of other farmers markets. They were associated with the organization that hosts this market and they had recommended us. We opened our doors mid-April and we started farmers markets about a week later, and this was our very first market.

Your prices range from?

Our prices range from as little as $1.25 to about $6, depending. Most of our breads are the most expensive thing that we carry. Most of the morning pastries are anywhere from $3 to $4.

Do you ever get people that say prices are too high?

Occasionally. There was a woman here earlier but she still bought the most expensive thing that we had. There’s always a sort of a risk of price sensitivity but basically our position is that we’re making really high quality, organic, handmade pastries and they’re kind of worth the prices. It’s much better than the $3 you might spend on a soggy croissant at a Peet’s coffee. We put a lot of love into all this stuff and I think people’s willingness to come back and continue buy stuff every week kind of indicates that they’re willing to pay for that.

CORRECTION: This article originally listed an inaccurate variety of bread as available from Starter Bakery. It has been updated to correct that. Of the breads, the multigrain sourdough is the most popular.

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.