LE PETIT CROISSANT

Bonjour, and welcome to Le Petit Croissant!  My name is Leah, and I have a passion for French baking.

I have been baking since I was a young girl. While other teenagers experimented with new outfits and makeup, I experimented with pâte à choux, apple strudel, and chocolate soufflé.

After frequent travel in France as an adult, I was inspired to replicate the golden brown and shatteringly flaky croissants I had enjoyed every day in France for breakfast. Deliciously soft and fluffy on the inside, those croissants had been pure ambrosia when smeared with local apricot jam.  I achieved my goal, but then a move to Colorado presented me with a new challenge:  baking at high altitude (6,300 feet).

When I could once again enjoy a little taste of France at home, I began selling hand-rolled Butter, Chocolate, and Almond croissants at a local farmer’s market.  Le Petit Croissant was born!  Please click here to see a schedule of my 2018 market dates, times, and locations.

I published my first cookbook — French Brunch At Home (#FrenchBrunchAtHome) — in November, 2016.  Full color, beautifully designed, and printed on premium soft matte paper, it features my very best recipes for croissants, morning buns, pain au chocolat, scones, brioche, quiche, granola, jams, and more. Adjustments for high altitude bakers are included, and Baker’s Tips, lovely photography, and fascinating histories abound.  This book is the perfect gift for friends, family, work colleagues, and — of course — you!

In 2017, I started teaching my signature “Learn To Make Croissants” class in downtown Colorado Springs. It was a hit!  And I was thoroughly hooked on teaching. When the shop closed in 2018, I looked into all the  permit, insurance, and HOA requirements associated with teaching from my own home kitchen.  For my students, learning to bake in a home kitchen is a rare treat.  Not only are you guaranteed that you can replicate at home whatever we make in class, but also the classes are necessarily small (5-7 students) and you are therefore guaranteed personal instruction.  Look for my class schedule on the Calendar page of this web site.

Throughout it all, I continue to run my farmer’s market booth throughout the summer and fall.  Here you can taste-test my jams — I’m up to 14 flavors now — as well as my croissants, scones, granola, and bread.  My schedule, as you might have guessed, is on my Calendar page.

Since I love connecting with like-minded people, I hope you will join  my Facebook group, “Baking 911: Tips, Fails, High Altitude Tricks.”  Here you can ask and answer questions, share your kitchen “fails” in a safe place, and gain insight into the vagaries of high altitude baking.  Or maybe you’d like to share your fails, just for laughs?  After all, what’s brunch at home without a few guests, some shared laughs, and interesting conversation?

To keep up with what’s new, please sign up for my newsletter by entering your email address in the box on this page.  Thank you.

And thanks for stopping by.  Bon Appétit!

Leah

leah@lepetitcroissant.com