Organic Pastry Update

At the start of this year, we asked Backwards Bread in St. Cloud if they would make 100% organic pastries for us. Being able to find an organic pastry is pretty hard to do and we thought it was kind of a big deal we'd be able to offer them. There are several a reasons that almost nobody makes organic pastries..

Besides being more difficult to source the actual organic ingredients, organic pastries are also significantly more difficult to make (see below). Using organic instead of specially formulated conventional ingredients causes the dough to be less forgiving. Travis, the original artisan at Backwards Bread, shared that organic butter is not as fault tolerant, there is no room for error. He told us a story about how recently his regular pastry chef made a whole batch and had to discard it because it wasn't good enough. That's how important it is for them to get it right.

Because of the time involved and the extra work to get it right, Backwards Bread recently let us know they didn't think they would be able to make any organic pastries for TC Farm any more. After some back and forth (where we might have even pleaded a little bit), Travis agreed that, in appreciation of TC Farm members, he would personally make all the pastries to ensure they are perfect every time. He will continue to make the butter croissants and sugar croissant buns.

But -- they will no longer be making almond croissant which are even less forgiving and even more work to make an organic version.

Meanwhile, TC Farm is going to be working with a small dairy to see if we can get a custom organic butter, made to spec specifically for pastries. We hope this might help us bring back the almond croissants.

So for now, we still offer:

• Butter croissants
• Sugar croissants

We no longer offer:

• Almond croissants

To all the almond croissant lovers out there: We feel your pain. And we're working on this end to see if we can help!

Lamination and artisan skill is what makes a croissant a croissant. Sadly, most of us have never had a real croissant. Even ours haven't always been perfect for the reasons stated here.

When made right, these kind of pastries are truly a work of art. The flakey texture is a result of dozens of layers of alternating dough and butter. All of which have to be hand-folded. All while ensuring the butter is the perfect temperature. Not too soft. Not too hard.

If the butter melts just a bit too much, the folding process will mix it into the dough and instead of having flakey layers, you will get more of a dinner roll. If the butter is too cold, it will shatter and also wreck the texture.

Almost all croissants sold in the grocery or even fancy restaurants are not made properly, I know some of the TC Farm ones haven't been 100% at times.

Many of us love cinnamon rolls, but Travis takes it to the next level. Using the croissant dough, he rolls it out into a cinnamon-sugar bun. If you haven't tried them yet, you are missing out.

We are super lucky to have someone like Travis making all of ours going forward. Enjoying a ham and Camembert and organic TC Farm croissant sandwich is something you'll not soon forget.