Have you ever heard of a Tropézienne? It's the missing link between sandwich and dessert. On first glance, it looks like a flat, unfrosted birthday cake served in wedges, but it also resembles a big, sweet-toothed version of a muffaletta, as if someone took a big brioche bun, sliced it down the middle and filled it with a layer of cool custard instead of meat. Legend has it that a Polish baker in Saint-Tropez invented it in the 1950s and that the pastry was a favorite of the voluptuous Brigitte Bardot. Since then, the people there regard the Tropézienne the same way those in Naples regard pizza: You simply can't leave without having one.
Pandor Artisan Boulangerie & Café also bakes a kouign-amann, made by fusing together broiche and croissant dough to form a dense pastry disc studded with dried cherries. The name is derived from the Breton word for butter and cake, but it eats as if it were a cross between an oatmeal cookie and a muffin top, its croissant DNA causing it to flake off in layers.
At this new bakery, the Tropézienne and kouign-amann are just some of many eclectic regional French specialties that will inspire the kind of where-have-you-been-all-my-life epiphanies as the first time you tore into the Taiwanese squid-ink bread at Irvine's 85°C or sunk your teeth into the Japanese strawberry croissant at Tustin's Cream Pan. Pandor is effectively the open-to-the-public showroom for RTR bakery, the wholesale side of the operation whose facility is located in an anonymous office park somewhere in Irvine. Tiffany and Raffi Sepetjian own both; their team of hired-gun Frenchmen do the baking, craft the dessert pastries, and execute a café menu full of sandwiches and egg dishes.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: OC Weekly
