05/25/2026
Evolution of our Hazelnut Croissants 🥐 🌰
Have you tried them all? What is your favorite?
A little backstory from Dan 📝
I used to make a lot of terrible croissants — overproofed, underproofed, all of it. When Heather and I first started weekly pickups, I was constantly on pins and needles hoping enough would pass my quality standards to sell 😂
To avoid waste, I’d bake extra croissants and experiment with ways to repurpose the less-than-perfect ones. The almond croissant is a classic example — a twice-baked pastry bakeries around the world use to give leftover croissants a second life.
Around the same time, I was introduced to Amanda from . Instead of the traditional vanilla, citrus, and almond filling, I wanted to create a version inspired by our region using brown butter, maple, and Niagara hazelnuts. The Twice Baked Hazelnut was born.
Crunchy, syrupy, and almost fudge-like inside, it quickly became — and still remains — my favourite pastry.
As we began taking on wholesale customers, I started developing a version that could make use of extra croissant sets after baking. That led to a pain au chocolat-style variation, which we ran in the bakery for many months.
Then, after popular demand, we brought the original twice-baked version back. Before long, we found ourselves baking nearly 3x the croissants just to keep up with demand for the twice bakes, which started creating daily production challenges.
Back to the drawing board.
That process eventually led to the Hazelnut Bar we make today — all the same flavours and local inspiration, but in a completely different form and experience.
This is one ingredient that will never leave the menu… as long as we can keep getting those Niagara hazelnuts!
