At the Dominique Ansel Workshop in the Flatiron district in the Manhattan borough of New York City, flavorful new pastries include the Coffee Cake & Chocolate Croissant Nest and the Passion Fruit & Honey Vanilla Brioche.
“The menu at the Workshop focuses on croissants and viennoiserie, so the classics have always been staples – a plain croissant, pain au chocolat, ham & cheese, almond, etc.,” shares Dominque Ansel, the award-winning pastry chef and owner of Dominique Ansel Bakery. “The Brown Sugar DKA (Dominique's Kouign Amann) is still our most popular pastry, it's like a caramelized croissant made with dark brown sugar.”
Roughly three years ago, New York City’s acclaimed Dominique Ansel Bakery opened its sister shop, Dominique Ansel Workshop. Featuring a croissant counter located right inside its pastry production kitchens, it’s just a block north of Madison Square Park.
“There's also a seasonal menu we change a few times a year. Right now, we've just started fall/winter pastries: there's a Earl Grey Caramelized Pecan Plié, Passionfruit Vanilla Honey Brioche with honeycomb toffee on top, Dark Chocolate Bun with candied orange peels, a Honeycrisp Apple Strudel with riz au lait inside, and a few others,” Ansel explains.
They also have a “weekend special” each weekend, usually seasonal i.e. fresh fruits during the summertime, heartier ingredients during colder months, and they also try different takes on classic desserts from around the world. “It's a lot of fun, and we see guests come in every weekend to try what's new,” Ansel says.
Seasonal pastries include Earl Grey & Caramelized Pecan Plié and Apple Riz au Lait Strudel.
The Brown Sugar DKA is still the most popular at the Workshop location, Ansel explains. “We make a classic DKA with regular sugar at the Bakery in Soho, which is still the best-selling pastry there, so you can only get the brown sugar version here in Flatiron so it's quite unique.”
And the weekend specials are always popular too, because the Dominique Ansel Workshop always changes it up each week and there's something new for people to discover, so they find that people have been coming back every weekend just to try what's new.
“We have a great team here at the Workshop, both front- and back-of the house,” Ansel shares. “As a bakery that's open pretty early each morning, all of our croissants are baked daily and this is also our main production kitchen for both here and the Soho location, so we have different shifts of chefs that rotate here pretty much 24-hours a day. It's a pretty well-oiled machine, and it all comes down to timing:”
The morning lamination team mixes and shapes all the doughs, then they're rolling all the croissants, cutting Cronut dough, etc. In the afternoon, there are daytime production cooks that are making the ganaches, jams, tart shells, etc.
There's an afternoon-evening finishing team that is finishing the pastries or doing the chocolate work so that the final touches are ready to go onto each pastry overnight or during the next morning in time for opening. There's an overnight team that's proofing and baking all the viennoiserie that the lamination team made during the daytime, so that they come out of the oven just before the bakery opens its doors. And there are deliveries between the Workshop and the Bakery in Soho twice a day, so that they can make sure everything is baked fresh daily.
Ansel shares that his favorite ingredients to work with are always French butter and French flour, which is what they use for all its croissants.
“If you have good quality ingredients as your foundation, it really makes a difference in the end result. It's also quite seasonal too – we try using different fresh fruits during the summertime, I always love the farmers market strawberries or fresh peaches. Sometimes we'll do a special with a rare fruit, like fraise de bois wild strawberries that get overnighted to us from Malaga, Spain.”
Holiday specials
Source: Dominique Ansel WorkshopThe award-winning pastry chef explains that with Thanksgiving coming up, they always bring back pies: Salted Caramel Apple, our Extra Silky Pumpkin Pie, and a Bourbon Pecan Pie with a vanilla sablé crust.
“I always tell the team, Thanksgiving is like our Super Bowl. We plan and prepare well ahead of time, and together, we make several thousand pies that all get served, sliced, picked up, shipped, etc. within a very short window of just a few days each November. But if we put our heads down, pace ourselves, maintain that quality, and work hard together, we can get through it,” Ansel shares.
Then the bakery heads directly into Christmas, which is a crazy time – “we'll make bûche de noël, and my favorite holiday thing we do each year is our Christmas Morning Cereal. It's got caramelized milk chocolate-covered crispy puffed rice, smoked cinnamon mini meringues, and whole caramelized hazelnuts. We started our years ago making just a few dozen boxes, and these days, we sell out of 6- or 7,000 boxes within a few minutes online. It's amazing.
“Now it's become a tradition for so many of our guests (I love waking up on Christmas and seeing people having their cereal together).”
Somewhere in there, they also make their Galette des Rois, the traditional French kings cake with the crown and fëve. “By the first week of January, we get a brief moment to breathe.”
Ansel marvels at the process of what they are able to accomplish. “I always tell our team, we aren't baking for ourselves. We are baking for people. We're baking for our guests who have visited us and supported us for so many years, from back when we were one shop in Soho with just 4 employees.
“So we're always listening, always coming up with new ideas, always changing our menus but keeping those classics alive too. For us, it's never about G trends or trying to create something purposefully in hopes that it goes "viral." Because at the end of the day, if it just looks unique but doesn't taste good, then what's the point? It's about making something genuine, using good quality ingredients, something that connects with people, something we believe in. That's what will last for years.”
