Denver high-end bakeries are on the rise since the pandemic

Shawn Bergin has risen a long way since he started baking loaves of bread and pastries out of his basement in 2019.

The owner of Bakery Four started his patisserie out of his Denver home, selling naturally leavened sourdough loaves and fresh croissants at pop-ups and farmers’ markets. He then moved into a 350-square-foot space in Denver’s Highland neighborhood, which garnered hour-long lines starting at 6:30 a.m. as fans waited patiently for his cinnamon-dusted morning buns and chocolate croissants made with European butter.

The demand was too much for the tiny shop — Bergin could only fit about five customers inside at a time — and he began looking for a bigger space, eventually opening his existing 3,000-square-foot location, at 4150 Tennyson St., last year (a separate bagel shop, Rich Spirit, will also open soon in Wheat Ridge.) But there are still lines down the block, and Bergin and his team still struggle to bake enough product to keep up.

“Everything moved so fast,” Bergin said. “It’s worked out for us so far, but with so much demand, it’s a blessing and a curse.”

Before the pandemic, there were “only a handful of bakeries” pulling off some of the more labor-intensive breads and pastries that people want, Bergin said, like laminated croissants, which involve folding and rolling the butter into the dough repeatedly to create delicate layers and a flaky texture.

But now “the bakery scene has blown up,” he explained. “There’s been an influx of people moving to Denver from other cities and states, which is in turn attracting more talent. The more people, the more appreciation there is for good food in general, and people expect better things.”

Since 2020, nearly 20 bakeries have opened in metro Denver, including standouts and cult favorites like Bakery Four, La Fillette in Denver, Poulette Bakeshop in Parker and GetRight’s bakery, cafe and plant shop in Wheat Ridge.

The treats lining the cases of many of these high-end shops are not only gorgeous — and highly Instagrammable — but technically difficult and nuanced to make. That’s why croissants, for instance, can average $5 a pop while sourdough loaves might run $10.

Some of these were started by at-home bakers — like Bergin and Matt Dulin, who started GetRight’s in 2020 — who gained confidence during the pandemic and took advantage of Colorado’s relaxed at-home commercial baking rules before moving into storefronts and shops. But others are the result of a new wave of talent who are moving up in Colorado or moving in from the coasts, and bringing an appreciation for high-end baking with them.

There’s been so much interest in flour, sugar and eggs, in fact, that Denver’s pastry chefs came together last August to form a cooperative, dubbed 5280 Pastry Co-Op, celebrating the air of friendly competition and collaborating on recipes and demonstrations.

“The bakery scene in Denver is growing because everyone is ready for it,” Dulin said. “We’re not just a quinoa and granola town anymore. Everyone’s more receptive to the nuance and niche offerings now.”

At-home bakers turned professionals

Colorado’s Cottage Foods Act, established in 2012 and updated in 2016, allows people to sell products made in their own kitchens without a license or inspection, as long as the goods do not require refrigeration and are not potentially hazardous.

The pandemic, however, lit a fire under both amateur and professional bakers and pastry chefs who had too much time on their hands during the statewide shutdown and decided to use the state’s permissive rules to their advantage.

GetRight’s Dulin had been in the restaurant industry for 19 years, most recently at Uncle Ramen, when he decided to go into business for himself. The pandemic had given him time to re-evaluate his career. “Cooking is where I always thought I’d end up, but for me, working too much ruined a bunch of relationships, and it was no longer my passion,” he said.

He first decided to pull away altogether, starting a greenhouse business out of his southwest Denver home. But it didn’t take off, so he started baking bread and pastries as well — he’d learned how to bake sourdough bread years earlier while working with Alex Figura, co-owner of Dio Mio and Redeemer Pizza — and quickly amassed a large following.

“I always wanted to have a restaurant, I just didn’t think it was going to be a bakery,” Dulin said.

Three years later, Dulin moved the business out of home, opening a storefront at 6985 W. 38th Ave., in Wheat Ridge, selling plants, fresh baked bread and pastries, and specialty savory items, like Roman pizza and salami sandwiches on homemade focaccia.

“The pandemic made everything seem much more achievable, and it gave people an excuse to try, especially since everyone saw failure at that time,” he said. “It sparked the fire for people like me. There was no better time to jump when everyone else was at square one.”

Out-of-town talent

Other at-home cottage bakeries that bloomed into brick-and-mortar spaces include Funky Flame, which opened a cafe in November this year at 4994 Lowell Blvd. with a focus on pizza, sourdough bread and coffee, and Poulette Bakeshop, which debuted at 19585 Hess Road in Parker in 2021.

Poulette’s owners, Carolyn Nugent and Alen Ramos, had moved to Denver from Chicago at the end of 2020 to find a more affordable long-term living situation after they were let go from their previous pastry chef gigs because of the pandemic. Both trained pastry chefs, Nugent and Ramos had worked in some of the world’s most famous pastry kitchens over the previous 20 years and met while working under world-renowned chef Joël Robuchon.

Like Dulin and Bergin, they took advantage of the Colorado Cottage Foods Act, opening their first business, Ulster Street Pastry, in their southeast Denver home. In late 2021, the couple changed the name to Poulette Bakeshop and opened in Parker. The five original menu items have now become 60, including a rainbow of macarons, viennoiseries, traditional French cakes and French choux pastries. They also have 10 employees and are building a commissary to grow further.

“It’s a very exciting market for pastry, which is surprising in my opinion because Denver doesn’t get the recognition that the coastal cities get, but in terms of great bakeries, I think that we’re right along with the East and West Coasts,” Nugent said. “We have a ton of talent here.”

“Had the pandemic never happened, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to come here, and it’s been the most amazing yet unexpected chapter in our lives,” she added.

Lillian Lu, a classically trained pastry chef, moved to Denver from New York a little earlier, in 2018, with her husband, Tim, to start their own business. She previously worked for world-renowned restaurants, like Ai Fiori and Michelin-starred Le Coucou.

In 2022, the couple opened Noisette, a classic French restaurant in Denver, and added a Parisian-style cafe and bakery in September that same year. Lu leads the bakery, which serves French baguettes every morning, golden-brown almond croissants, Baba au Rhum and Tarte Tropézienne.

“Denver’s bakery scene is thriving,” Lu said. “… People are more educated on what constitutes good bread and pastries, which helps business owners put out high-quality products, but also creates demand for them as well.”

Sap Sua, a Vietnamese restaurant that opened earlier this year, also added a bakery to its lineup last month. Co-owner and pastry chef Anna Nguyen, who has experience at Michelin-starred restaurants like Osteria Mozza, started The Bakehouse at Sap Sua for Thanksgiving before temporarily shutting down for the Christmas season.

She plans to reopen in the New Year every Saturday and Sunday morning, baking an array of cookies, coffee cake, apple crisps, fruit tarts and homemade “Pop-Tarts,” reminiscent of her childhood.

Homegrown dough

Thoa Nguyen didn’t have to move to Colorado from another state to start her own bakery, but she did cross from one side of town to the other. Nguyen, whose parents own New Saigon Vietnamese restaurant and New Saigon Bakery on South Federal Boulevard in Denver, opened her own French-Asian fusion bakery, dubbed Banh & Butter Bakery Cafe, in Aurora last year.

She draws crowds in for her ube crepe cakes, French apple tarts and Vietnamese coffee poured over flan — and isn’t shy about posting beautiful pictures of these creations on social media. In late 2023, Nguyen, who trained in France competed and made it to the finale of Food Network’s “Holiday Baking Championship.”

On the west side, Black Box Bakery made its brick-and-mortar debut in Edgewater Public Market last March. Owners Arielle Israel, Megan Read and her husband Ty Webb transitioned from wholesale-only into retail and have gone viral for their cube croissants and space-themed pastries.

Israel, who grew up in Israel, and Read, a Florida native, met while attending the Culinary Institute of America in New York. They began as pastry chefs at The Bindery in LoHi before starting their own business in 2019.

“The bakery scene here is definitely diverse in the best way,” Israel said. “There are a lot of bakeries that don’t only focus on classic French pastries but introduce their own type of flair to the baked goods, taking different inspirations from different countries, too.”

Always room for more dessert

With so many buns in Denver’s ovens, a group of bakers and pastry makers earlier this year launched the 5280 Pastry Co-Op, Colorado’s first organization for pastry chefs. Not only did they want to build recognition for local businesses, but they felt like it was time to step up now that Denver’s food scene is squarely in the sights of the Michelin Guide, which debuted here in September.

Six board members lead the group: Gaylord Rockies Resort’s executive pastry chef Brielle Fratellone; Hearth Bakery owner Matt Quinlisk; Edible Beats’ culinary operations chef Joy Williams-Clark; Brooke Hammond, Denver sales manager for Valrhona Chocolate; and Garret Meyer and Jeff Jones, sales consultants for Denver-based Altamira, which provides specialty food products for chefs around the state.

“There was a lot of recognition for the savory side of things with Michelin and Denver Food & Wine that we thought it was important to highlight the bakers because sometimes pastry or dessert can be an overseen aspect of a restaurant, but it can also be a highlight of a restaurant,” Meyer said.

Altamira provides specialty items, like Isigny Sainte-Mere butter and Bob’s Red Mill flour, for dozens of Denver bakeries, including Bakery Four. In fact, Bakery Four asked Altamira to ship so much of the butter here that the company expanded its offerings and began offering it to other bakes in town.

“Bakery Four set a model to go above and beyond sourcing the best products for baking,” Meyer said. “For a long time, pastry chefs would just buy what was around, but Shawn was the first one who really started to target intentional products.”

Altamira also works with Fratellone, who was a driving force behind the co-op. Fratellone moved here from Miami in 2021 to take the Gaylord pastry chef position, and “I didn’t know anyone, but I was craving that connection within the industry,” she said.

Fratellone was previously a part of a similar group in Miami and wanted to connect chefs around the city to share recipes, offer demonstrations and highlight individual businesses. Meyer connected Fratellone with Williams-Clark and Hammond to form the co-op.

“Pastry chefs are very busy and consumed in our work, but we’re also really looking for that connection with other pastry chefs,” Fratellone said. “It’s really hard to find answers to questions a lot of the time. In hotel operations, once you reach a certain level, your boss is the executive chef, who probably has no pastry experience, so you need your own pastry connections to solve those issues and troubleshoot recipes.”