One could readily tick off reasons why the HDL French bakery wouldn’t work.
After all, the kitchen is too small for big ideas. The advertising budget amounts to a nice, round zero. And proprietor Roger Hue de Laroque — along with his son Pascal — have the added burden of selling at 15 farmers’ markets a week throughout the summer months.
“So it’s already hard enough,” Hue de Laroque said with a wry smile.
As daunting as it is, the list doesn’t even address the bakery’s biggest issue. No matter how many early morning hours they spend behind the oven, every day they sell out — of artisan breads, croissants, artful lattice pastries and the lot — long before closing time.
HDL Farm Gourmet Food Co. & French Bakery, open in Clearlake Oaks since Thanksgiving, is just that good.
The unobtrusive little storefront prepares batards and baguettes, rustic sourdough loaves and breads studded with olive or garlic. Sandwiches of jambon imported from France lend an old world feel. Chicken served on panini is hormone free, as is common throughout Europe. Bread crafted from flour also imported France offers a brittle then chewy bite, but an ethereal presence as authentic as the tri-color waving out front.
And why not, Hue de Laroque grew up in Normandy. He opened his first restaurant in France at the age of 20. And for the past seven years he has been preparing rich and pleasing jams, bottling glorious aged balsamic and spreading dense, creamy nut butters at markets around Northern California.
But it took a couple strokes of fortune for Hue de Laroque and his son to open the doors to a bakery, cafe and shop.
The first may seem mundane — a new lease. It provided, however, some necessary long term stability. They also ended last year’s farmers’ market season by toting baskets of freshly baked bread along.
Obviously they were encouraged by the results. Of course, they understood that opening any new venture comes with risks.
“When my son and I said ‘we’re going to open’ our attitude was ‘we will see how it goes,’” Hue de Laroque recalled. “It blew us out of the water. That’s good.”
The breads, jams and other items developed a devoted following for good reason. The golden loaves appeal, even to the eye. Yet Hue de Laroque never trained formally in the tricky discipline of traditional baking.
His first foray behind a bakery oven came a year after he opened that dining room in France. Ambitious, he topped it with a nightclub the next year. Early one morning, as he was locking up, his brother in law — a baker — called.
It turns out an assistant had failed to show.
“He said ‘can you give me a hand,’” Hue de Laroque said. “Baking is not easy, but I learned doing that.”
Drop by early enough, while he still has inventory, and you’ll discover that he learned very, very well.
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
