The mystery of Baker Doe
Like John Doe and Jane Doe, Baker Doe has an unknown identity, but you’re about to learn some key details about San Francisco’s most experimental — and yes, Instagrammable — guerrilla operations.
Baker Doe’s creations are wild and often seem ridiculous, until you try them. Crispy dough layers coddle a savory Danish with Japanese Berkshire pork sausage, wasabi-spiked mayo, shiso leaves and caramelized shallots. The edges of double-baked croissants, in varieties like miso-hazelnut and matcha-anko, straddle the desirable line where cookies begin. Other croissants may come with black garlic, or molten centers of yuzu cream or black sesame paste.
Inspiration for new items comes from everywhere. A recent movie night spawned the idea of a butter croissant filled with popcorn cream, while a blue dragon mural at Chinatown’s new Enter the Cafe, which sells a different menu of Baker Doe products every Saturday, is the reference point for a blue croissant topped with cotton candy and injected with fiery chile orange curd. Newer ideas include a squid ink Danish with bonito flakes, bechamel sauce and a soft egg.
Some might see it as stunt food, but Baker Doe looks at their creations more like challenges as they try to execute even their most far-fetched ideas to their standards.
Spoiler alert: Baker Doe is actually two people — two self-taught chefs who want to remain anonymous, at least for the time being. The ano-
nymity is part of their marketing ploy, though most Bay Area foodies wouldn’t likely recognize their names regardless. (In other words, it’s not Thomas Keller and Jacques Pepin.)
Half of the self-taught team concentrates on the pastries’ fillings and flavor profiles. Hailing from Hong Kong, this partner became a selftaught pastry chef after being inspired by the smells and sweets of Montreal bakeries. After moving to San Francisco, the partner was mentored by a French pastry chef and made desserts for a popular South Asian restaurant.
The other half tackles the detailed, multiday process of dough lamination, which serves a collective OCD very well.
“I am really precise; I like to be able to count each layer,” says the dough specialist, a former concrete and steel sculptor and graffiti artist from France who worked in San Francisco bars and restaurants prior to this current venture. Croissants like the ones from back home haven’t been easy to find.
Baker Doe would like to find a San Francisco storefront where the pair can have a kitchen and sell items to-go from a counter. They are open to pretty much any neighborhood, reasoning that this is a fairly fresh time when pastry fans in the city support places regardless of location if the product is strong enough, citing the rise of bakeries like B. Patisserie and Mr. Holmes Bakehouse.
Until then, new menus are popping up each Saturday at Enter the Cafe and a separate menu is available for cash-only Sunday-morning delivery in San Francisco. Menus are posted on Friday afternoons on the Baker Doe Facebook page and orders are taken for the next 24 hours — or until the 150 or so pieces sell out.
It’s difficult not to develop attachments after tasting through a week’s menu, but Baker Doe is easily bored, so some of the flavors may never be repeated again. That’s a little bit maddening, but for San Francisco pastry fans, it’s also part of the appeal. There are a number of people who order Baker Doe delivery every Sunday, regulars who have been dubbed “repeat offenders.”
A permanent bakery would still be a smallbatch facility because of the time-consuming nature of the products.
“I will never do quantities over quality, period,” says the French half of Baker Doe. “It takes three days from start to finish for a batch. And for people that try to rush us, I only have one word, which is ‘no.’ I could have two words, but I wouldn't be polite in that case.”