The Croissant They Couldn't Find in New Orleans
How two bakers from Lyon brought a piece of France to Frenchmen Street — and why they still start at 4 AM every morning
When Camille and Rémi Bertrand arrived in New Orleans in 2013, they were immediately captivated — the music drifting out of Frenchmen Street, the unhurried pace, the way the city absorbed people into itself. What they could not find, anywhere, was the croissant they had grown up eating in Lyon.
Not a reasonable approximation. Not something that looked the part. The real thing: shattering layers, a honeycomb interior, a deep buttery smell that fills a bakehouse at five in the morning and doesn't leave you for hours. They spent six months searching. They found good coffee. They found remarkable po'boys. They did not find that croissant.
In 2014 they rented a small space on Frenchmen Street, installed a Bongard deck oven, and began the three-day lamination process that produces a proper croissant. Camille had trained at the Ferrandi School of Culinary Arts in Paris. Rémi had apprenticed under a master boulanger in Bordeaux. Together they had the technical vocabulary. What they needed was the time to execute it — and the discipline to never cut corners.
Eleven years later, the oven has not stopped. The croissant process still starts three days before the croissant reaches the counter. The baguettes still contain four ingredients: stone-milled flour from a Louisiana heritage mill, filtered water, Gulf Coast sea salt, and their sourdough starter — now eleven years old itself. Rémi mills flour three times a week on a stone mill in the bakehouse. Nothing is frozen. Nothing is par-baked. Everything is made where it is sold, on the day it is sold.
New Orleans has been generous in return. Maison Bertrand has become part of the neighborhood's morning rhythm — the place you stop before jazz practice, before work, before the city fully wakes up. That, they say, is the point.