Pastry Shop Hop

On my trip I of course wanted to go to as many bakeries as possible. One... to eat but most importantly to see price points, quality,quantity,skill and their pastry variety. Over the next 6 months I will be getting myself geared toward my own store front. With LOTS to do and many UNknowns I have lots of investigating to do. The beautiful Lemon Tarts above was from one of my favorite bakeries Shaadzee Bakery Bistro in Pleasant Hill,CA. we actually went in there for breakfast but found a great little bakery. I really appreciated that whoever does their pastries,cakes and tarts has REAL skills and training behind them. You can tell in the way the cakes are layered and the by the types of pastries they offer that they know what they are doing. I didn't want to take too many pictures of products because people don't like that very much!FYI
Next place that was very good was Walnut Creek Baking Company They have a petite little shop downtown Walnut Creek. I enjoyed my black bottom cupcake with cream cheese frosting! but wasn't impressed with my lemon bar because the curd was not strained and the eggs got over cooked leaving a chunky texture plus I like really tart lemon. I also wasn't fond of their pecan apple tartlette..flavorless. I do think their cakes looked good.

Off to Napa Valley where they have The Culinary Institute of America. What a beautiful area to learn. They do have a {AOS} baking program that is temping to want to be apart of but after this semester of my current Pastry Program in KC ... I'm done with school...

We stopped by Bouchon's bakery which is one of the many high end establishments of Legendary Thomas Keller. The bakery was petite and OH sooo expensive...I like their pastries, bread and even cookies {which is amazing for me} but they offer No cakes.... which is a shame.

{Me enjoying Yountville}

Now for my must have Cardamom roll from Village Bakery in Calistoga,CA I also picked up a chocolate souffle cake {YUM!}

and a Chocolate Framboise which was just okay...

The picture above is of Dean and Deluca's Bakery... cute flower pot cakes but everything else seemed just okay and the worst part is that they do even less production then we do at the Leawood,KS store.Moving on the Sonoma County Bakeries...My favorite is Michelle Marie's It is do to the variety and quality of skill that they bring...I would work here!
Viola is not too far from Michelle Marie's but lacks much! I felt that their selection was boring the only thing I wanted was their Salted Carmel Ganache Tart {which we make at Dean and Deluca so I didn't waste my money} I thought their cookies were dreadful!
YES that is red velvet cake! My friend Rosie got it for us to try from Nothing Bundt Cakes. it was very good! Their staple Cream cheese Icing is something I would love to recreate! In conclusion...
I feel at seeing what's out there and knowing what I want to do and what I don't want to do is going to help me be successful in my future..