SEQUIM — It won’t be long now before it’s April in Paris here on the prairie.
Pane D’Amore, a beloved artisan bakery at 617 Tyler St. in uptown Port Townsend, is coming to Sequim — bearing European breads and pastries.
“We’re hoping to open by the end of the month,” owner Linda Yakush said last Friday.
Pane D’Amore’s Sequim storefront at 150 S. Fifth Ave., a few doors down from the Peninsula Daily News’ Sequim-Dungeness Valley bureau, will offer fresh breads, house-made chocolates, Parisian macaroons and other delicate Continental pastries.
Among those: canelés, “an amazing little dessert I discovered in Paris last year,” said Yakush.
She calls the confection “a portable crîme brulée,” owing to its petite stature, caramelized crust and soft custard center.
Sequim’s shop will take the shape of “an open picnic basket,” Yakush said, with olive oils, artisan cheeses, balsamic vinegars and other accoutrements to Pane D’Amore’s sourdoughs, ciabatta, kalamata olive loaves, French baguettes and rosemary buns.
Planning to sell wine
To complete the springtime idyll for her customers, she’s applying for a license to sell wine too.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” said Yakush, who opened the first Pane D’Amore in 2003 with her partner Frank d’Amore.
No baking will take place in Sequim, but when the shop opens at 8 a.m. each day, the shelves will be stocked with breads and pastries brought out of the Port Townsend ovens at 6 a.m. that morning, Yakush promised.
The shop will have one full-time staffer and three part-timers, she said.
Pane D’Amore will be the second artisan bakery to celebrate an April opening here.
The Bell Street Bakery, about three blocks east at 173 W. Bell St., has been selling bread and treats from its production facility since mid-February.
April 15 opening
It will open its long-awaited retail shop at 8 a.m. on April 15, baker Roger Stukey said on Monday.
Response to his loaves “has been spectacular,” Stukey added.
“People are very fond of the old-fashioned cinnamon rolls,” along with the croissants and Sequim sourdough made on the premises.
Stukey also has concocted a bread that integrates seasonal carrots and other winter-to-spring vegetables from Nash’s Organic Produce in Dungeness.
Stukey oven-roasts the veggies, puts them through a grinder then adds them to his batter; carrots, sunchokes, parsnips and golden turnips provide rich flavor as well as nutrients, Stukey said.
To enliven his deli rye and corn bread, the baker routinely roasts whole cases of onions.
Bell Street Bakery’s sales have been averaging about 100 loaves a day plus about 100 pastries such as croissants and scones, Stukey said.
He added that he’s happy to see Sequim getting another bakery that, like his, uses fresh and organic ingredients.
Yakush, for her part, believes there’s plenty of appetite in Sequim to keep everybody’s ovens hot.
“We have so many customers [in Port Townsend] who come to us from Sequim,” she said, adding that she and her staff take three or four calls a week from Clallam County. “People are pretty relentless,” Yakush said.
Stukey too believes bakeries are holding their own in the difficult economy, as people pack brown-bag lunches and treat themselves to the simple pleasure of fresh bread.
“We wish [Pane D’Amore], and our fellow business owners, success in this climate,” he said.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
