In our article series “Facts” we’ll be talking with members of the coffee shop ecosystem that inspire us, from bakeries to manufacturers, consumer products, and everyone else in between. We want to get to know these folks, and we want you to, too. We’ll be asking everyone the same three questions—the answers, though, will be wildly different.

Here we have Francoise Ip, pastry chef for the illustrious Pain d’Avignon. Pain d’Avignon does things a little differently—they ferment their doughs, using simple, mostly local ingredients and one that is in short supply in the modern era: time. Francoise gave us some insight into the process.

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What is Pain d'Avignon best known for?

Beautiful, big artisanal breads. Our signature breads include our pain de campagne and seeded sourdough, as well as cranberry pecan sourdough. We also make traditional French croissants using 83% European butter, giving all our pastries a wonderful, buttery mouthfeel and a beautiful flaky honeycomb texture.

What is the first thing you baked?

Pain de campagne. Since the first day we've always wanted to nail this down. Following the old-fashioned way of making breads using long fermentation process is what we strive for.

What are you working on that no one knows about yet?

Currently we are introducing weekly pastry boxes featuring a new pastry using seasonal fruits every week. We are also looking into different kinds of fruit-based breads to launch for the holidays at the end of the year.