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Daria Bishop
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Chef-owner Shelley MacDonald with clients
It has been an extended, sluggish construct towards the total opening of Belleville Bakery, which chef-owner Shelley MacDonald launched in late fall 2020 with weekly pickups from her Burlington condominium. On January 5, after six months of renovations and three months of takeout-window gross sales, the general public lastly stepped into Belleville’s new brick-and-mortar location at 217 Faculty Road — excellent timing for the second story in our Bakery Month sequence. (Food plan in January? Not us.)
Within the shiny house with brick partitions, a periwinkle ceiling and pendant lights crafted from industrial whisks, clients choose from a every day menu that may embrace ethereal, moist orange-olive oil tea cake (from $4 a slice); indulgent mini Belgian chocolate tarts scattered with dried fruits and pistachios ($6); or particular person, crisp-crusted quiches ($9) in flavors reminiscent of bacon-cheddar with broccoli or sun-dried tomato and pesto.
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Daria Bishop
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Baked items at Belleville Bakery
Clients can keep to eat and sip espresso, tea or fresh-pressed juices ($3 to $10) as they watch MacDonald; her husband, André Beaulieu; and a staff of blue-aproned apprentices work within the open kitchen. Eliminating inside partitions made the perfect use of the 1,200-square-foot house, beforehand house to My Little Cupcake, which is now centered largely on wholesale. And the format, as MacDonald, 56, famous with a smile, “forces us to be higher.”
MacDonald and Beaulieu, an expert artist whose hyperrealist oil work dangle on the bakery wall, initially hail from Canada. They moved to Burlington in 2020 after 11 years in Paris, the place MacDonald studied cooking at Le Cordon Bleu and began her first culinary enterprise. Whereas her menu shouldn’t be purely French, she mentioned it is “European in sensibility.” Or, extra pointedly: “It is all do-it-yourself by any person who provides a shit.”
The bakery’s hours — presently 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday by means of Sunday — and rotating menu of candy and savory objects will develop step by step, MacDonald mentioned. The 4,000-plus recipients of her weekly digital mailings can nonetheless preorder, and he or she takes a restricted variety of particular orders.
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Daria Bishop
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Solar-dried tomato and pesto quiches
MacDonald is a lifelong entrepreneur and believes strongly in direct buyer communication, evident in her enthusiastic and prolific use of newsletters and social media. “I just like the storytelling,” she mentioned. She additionally likes altering her menu weekly. “Folks turn out to be loyal to you and to not lemon bars,” MacDonald mentioned. Plus, she added, “It is far more attention-grabbing for the workers. I do not need to make banana bread day-after-day.”
What MacDonald does need to make — and eat — varies. “You make what you want, and also you hope there are sufficient different individuals such as you,” she mentioned. Her menu options many French classics, reminiscent of pillow-soft, buttery brioche loaves ($3 to $9 primarily based on measurement) and nutty brown-butter almond financiers with an alluringly crisp chew ($2). Showstoppers embrace multilayered Japanese European Medovik honey-and-cream cake and lemon-blueberry genoise sponge cake swathed in deep lilac cream cheese frosting (each from $8 a slice).
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Daria Bishop
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Jessie Tarnoff frosting a Medovik cake
The every day cookie roster ($3 every) may supply skinny, chewy “ex-boyfriend” (ask MacDonald to elucidate) chocolate chip cookies liberally studded with chocolate chunks, or densely scrumptious, nearly savory chocolate chip-cranberry cookies enhanced with rye flour and poppy seeds. Her straight-sided, frosted or glazed “babycakes” ($4 every; do not name them cupcakes) are available flavors reminiscent of lime-cardamom and chocolate-Champagne. Mini cheesecakes ($7.50) ship intense, creamy combos, together with chocolate cookie-crusted pistachio and mocha with a cappuccino shortbread base.
The cheesecakes are undoubtedly wealthy sufficient to share, however I might argue that we every deserve our personal. Life is gorgeous, or la vie est belle, as they are saying in French. Belleville invitations us to indulge.