Besieged by hype about Bellecour (and its bakery) we made our way out to Wayzata a couple of weekends ago to snag a breakfast of pastries and coffee. If you know good bakeries, you know the feeling we had when we walked into Bellecour — it was a Patisserie 46 feeling, a Rustica feeling, a Bachelor Farmer feeling — that sense that everything in the shop had a crisp, buttery, just-so thing going on, and that every bite was going to be good. An assortment of baked goods proved that feeling correct, but the plain old croissant was the best of a lovable bunch.
A really great croissant is almost a contradiction — soft and buttery yet cunningly woven from seemingly hundreds of distinct crispy, crunchy, delicate layers of pastry. It almost disintegrates in your mouth, crumbling and melting with every bite. It’s one of the best foods humanity’s yet devised, but it doesn’t come easy — making a really good croissant takes time, patience, and technique, and from tasting the croissant at Bellecour it’s evident that they have plenty of all three.
Bellecour is a long drive for me (about 25 minutes), and there are equally good versions of everything they do in Minneapolis proper, which isn’t hurting for good bakeries. Except … the croissant. The croissant is going to be the siren song that takes me an hour out of my way, sometime soon, to taste those buttery layers again.
Bellecour, 739 Lake St E, Wayzata; 952.444.5200