San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Chef delivers with coffeelaced cinnamon rolls
One of San Francisco’s most compelling new pastries is finished in the back of a Prius, the one that Bar Agricole pastry chef Eric Chow uses to deliver his buttery cinnamon rolls throughout the city while the restaurant relocates.
The cinnamon roll, made from a briochelike dough with a brown sugar cinnamon paste, is soft and fluffy, like a small poofy pillow. But the final touch is a surprising one for a pandemic curbside-delivery food service: Chow himself paints a brush of slightly bitter coffee and caramel sauce onto the roll and finishes it off with a spoonful of fresh coffee cream cheese frosting right in front of your masked face.
It’s a familiar treat with slight tweaks from Chow. The exterior is slightly crispier than most, a contrast to the soft, coffee-laced interior. Instead of a thick, sticky frosting, Chow mixes powdered sugar, cream cheese and a coffee pastry cream for a lighter rendition. It flows over the roll like lava.
But the process starts the night before, when Chow mixes together a dough of flour, milk, yogurt, yeast and plenty of butter. He lets it ferment for two hours at room temperature, letting the aroma and flavor develop. It then goes in the fridge overnight for a slowdown of the fermentation process. The next morning, Chow divides and shapes it into several flat rectangles. Each one gets a layer of cinnamon, sugar and butter paste and then gets rolled into a cylinder to obtain the spiraled look. The cylinder is sliced and then plopped into a pan to proof. Then, just prior to baking, he brushes each roll with a bit of coffee mixed with cream to ensure moistness throughout, a trick he says he learned from pastry chef Amanda Hoang at Viridian in Oakland.
The à la minute aspect of the glaze was a lastminute accident. When Chow debuted his pastries to the public in June for Bakers Against Racism, a global bake sale that raises money to organizations that fight racism, he was running out of time. “The buns were too hot to frost, but later I realized it was better that way,” he says.
Chow runs his popup, called Astranda Bakery, out of Elda, the selfdescribed “California Bar With a Latin Soul” on 16th Street in the Mission District on Wednesdays, where the pickup window is open 11 a. m. to 1 p. m. He also recently started delivering to Magnolia Mini Mart in Oakland on Thursdays, where the team there will finish the glazing and frosting process for him. The cinnamon rolls are sold alongside other pastries like white chocolate scones topped with strawberry and stone fruitfilled crostatas. He also recently sold the rolls at a fundraiser bake sale at Mission Bowling Club for education-equity nonprofit Coleman Advocates, an event where I also participated.
But the real move is to get the cinnamon roll delivered. Chow will drive anywhere in San Francisco, dolloping the cream cheese last minute in the back of his car. The pastry costs $ 7, the delivery costs $ 6, and it’s big enough to share between two.
Like many other pandemic pastry shops, Chow started the venture after being laid off from his restaurant job. The San Francisco native worked his way through kitchens at restaurants like Mission Bowling Club and the Perennial and later at Tartine Bakery to learn pastry. There, he mastered the ins and outs of morning buns and croissants.
Chow first made the cinnamon rolls on what would be the last family meal at Bar Agricole, Thad Vogler’s SoMa cocktail bar and restaurant, before it shut down temporarily in March. “It was something I always wanted to do, and it was a fun and comforting thing for staff meal,” Chow says.
In the interim, Chow is running his solo popup, named after his dog, Aster, and his cat, Dandelion. He’s got to pay the bills somehow.
“It’s just until Bar Agricole reopens,” Chow says of his popup. “But I’m definitely having fun.”
Omar Mamoon is a San Francisco writer and cookie guy. Instagram: @ ommmar Email: food@sfchronicle.com