French pastry chef dreamt of Colorado before bringing croissant bliss to Parker

Long before he moved his family here, Michael Dupont dreamed of the American West.

“Colorado is very famous in France for skiing and from the Western movies,” he said. Cowboys and gunslingers held a particular fascination for him.

Working in a bakery in his hometown of Caen, he made friends with customers from Parker who urged him to visit. All it took was one ski trip to Colorado in 2006 to make him fall in love with the state and plan to move after 25 years in the bakery business.

“We came directly here — from Normandy to Parker,” he said during a rare opportunity to sit down at his busy bakery, La Baguette de Normandy.

Nearby a glass case gleams with trays of flaky, butter-layered croissants, decorated cookies, pastry cream-filled cornets, meringues and best-sellers like napoleons, eclairs and lemon cake.

His signature dessert creations include the Nenouko, a cake involving chocolate mousse, pecan and almond cream, shortbread and dark chocolate. Atop one counter are super-crusty baguettes with moist airy interiors and loaves of rustic bread ranging from round miche to farmhouse sourdough.

Baking was not in his blood. “I’m the first one in my family to be involved in this work,” Dupont said.

“I had friends who were working at a bakery and they told me I should try it too.”

He liked the work but it took awhile to get used to “baker’s hours” — getting up at 2 a.m. every morning. At the age of 16 he entered trade school intent on mastering the three “very different” French bakery arts: bread, pastry and chocolate.

“I wanted to be able to do everything myself,” Dupont said, so that he’d never have to work for somone else.

He and his wife Blanca opened the Parker bakery in 2007. They were intent on running a traditional shop just like the one they still own in the town of Pont-l’Évêque that sells mainly bread during the week and “Sunday pastries” on the weekend. He found out quickly that American consumers were quite different from the French. His customers didn’t come in every day to get fresh baguettes for the family and when they did come on a Wednesday, they wanted pain au chocolat as well as bread.

“I started to have more pastries and cookies and less bread and then we added coffee and breakfast,” he said. They added tables and chairs eventually.

However, Dupont has insisted on having “only things we would serve in France” in the shop such as quiche Lorraine and croque monsieur, the wonderful French-toasted ham and cheese sandwich. “We do not have cupcakes or muffins,” he said.

For lunch the bakery serves 23 simple variations on the cold sandwich theme that would be familiar to anyone who has visited France. One choice is butter, ham, cheese, cornichon and lettuce on a fresh baguette.

From the beginning there were no shortcuts. “I make everything from scratch. It has to be very fresh,” Dupont said. That’s why he’s one of few metro area bakers to make his own croissant dough by laboriously rolling in multiple layers of sweet butter.

That means he still gets up at 2 a.m. six days a week. “I come in to make the bread and pastries,” he said. He heads home a few miles away to nap for 90 minutes before coming back to finish the day.

When Dupont wants to really live it up, he sleeps in until 7 a.m. on his day off. As demanding as the job is, he said it’s still better than being a baker in France. There, he would work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Here he closes the shop at 5:30 p.m. and sees his family in the evening.

Besides, he said, he likes the weather. “Where I’m from in Normandy near the English Channel it rains a lot — A LOT.”

The other difference is that he loves the social interaction with his customers in Parker.

“Here people are so nice, even if you’re out of a particular pastry. They say ‘It’s OK’ and get something else. In France, they would say ‘What the hell are you doing? What do you mean you don’t have apple turnovers,’ he said in his still-strong French accent.

As the holiday season approaches, Dupont is preparing to produce oodles of dinner rolls, bonbons, molded chocolate treats, gingerbread men and buches de Noel (Christmas logs). He’ll increase his weekly butter order up from his usual 50 pounds. He has also given in, he admits, and sells pecan and pumpkin “pies” but they are really fine French tarts in disguise.

Dupont is settled comfortably in Parker with his wife and a 15-year-old son who attends Chapparal High School. His tri-lingual 21-year-old son is in college studying international business. Luckily, he’s found good bakery help among students at Denver’s Johnson & Wales University because neither child is interested in taking over his business. “They see us work too much,” he said.

However, unlike when he was in France, the Duponts will take off Christmas Eve night to celebrate the holiday with his family. “The first time I celebrated Christmas with my older son was when he was 16 years old,” he said.

“I came here to change my life,” Dupont said, and by all accounts he has succeeded beyond his biggest cowboy dreams.