An assortment of pastries from the newly opened Bread Club.
Courtney E. Smith
At this point, The Bread Club has been open since Monday, March 2, but has been officially open only since March 9. In one week, influencer flooded their feeds with The Bread Club. DMagazine, The Dallas Morning News and the Observer (of course) all covered its opening. By Sunday morning, the patio was packed with customers who spread out onto the lawn and empty tables across the way at Written by the Seasons.
The reason people who know food flocked to this spot as soon as possible is that it is from Feels Like Home Hospitality, the group behind Dallas’s latest Michelin-starred restaurant, Mamani. Anyone who has had the bread service, including a rotating selection of freshly baked bread served with Rodolphe Le Meunier butter flown in from France, felt their antennae tingling at the prospect of a full-on bread-focused spot.
Not Your Average Baker
The Bread Club recruited Peter Edris — formerly of Frenchette Bakery in the Tribeca neighborhood and at the Whitney Museum — to lead the baking program. He brings expertise in baking with ancient and heirloom grains from buckwheat-flour cookies and breads made with malted rye or spelt. Christophe De Lellis, who serves as chef at Mamani and culinary director for the group, is also involved. Under their collective guidance, a reverence for French baking is put front and center.
Where to Start
We went all in on pastries for our first visit, and the sophistication of what’s on offer here is impressive. De Lellis recommended ordering the pain au chocolate, named the Chocolate “B” Croissant ($9.50), noting that it was his favorite. It is a great place to start. Flaky layers of laminated pastry and semi-sweet chocolate line the top of the pastry and show up as a thick bar inside, on both sides of the bottom of the pastry. It’s a very grown-up treat.
Also recommended was the Pistachio Pain Suisse ($10.50), a chocolate croissant filled with pistachio cream that shoots out of a split in the back of the pastry if you don’t watch what you’re doing. The thin, fresh pistachio cream has nutty chunks and a beautiful green flavor, while the chocolate is semi-sweet, creating a gorgeous, complementary bite that is never too sweet.
The seasonal Danish was a blood orange with sweet cream ($8), which highlights what the Bread Club does really well: making laminated pastries that don’t flake into a million pieces. It’s cooked to a proper golden hue, crisp on the outside and fluffy and soft inside.
The Queen
The kouign (pronounced “queen”) amann ($7) was the sweetest bite we had, full of butter, dough and caramelized sugar. A fine counterpoint comes in the strawberry fig muffin ($7), a corn muffin with a savory bent, made decadent by a dollop of strawberry jam inside and perfectly ripe strawberry chunks dotting the outside.
Most noteworthy was the ensaymada ($7), which is not on the opening menu. It’s a Spanish pastry with deceptive looks. The Bread Club version is shaped like a flower and coated in sugar; it looks like you’re going to get a big doughnut-sized serving of stuffed cream and sweetness. However, it’s savory — that cream is a sweet cream butter, and the flakes on top of it are cheese. The sugar dusted on top has such a light flavor that it adds more texture than sweetness. Inside was the bready, doughnut-like texture anticipated.
Coffee a la La Marzocco and Le Bernardin
The coffee program is equally impressive, featuring beans from Coperaco Reserve Coffee Beans, which are what is in the cup when you order coffee at the three Michelin-starred, storied Le Bernardin. Not just any cafe can get it — the barista told us that one of the owners is a childhood friend of De Lilles. The beans come from the Nicaraguan reserve series, grown in a protected nature reserve where only 15% is cultivated by hand at any given time.
Espresso shots are pulled from a La Marzocco, the holy grail of espresso. We got a simple latte ($6), which was heavenly and served in a to-go cup without a lid so we could enjoy the latte art. But after seeing multiple einspänner lattes ($7), loaded with layers of vanilla bean cold foam and cocoa, we’ll be ordering that on the next trip.
Oh yes, there will be another trip, and many more after that. There’s a whole menu of proper loaves of bread, sandwiches, and salads to try, preferably with a glass of roasted lemon lemonade.