Small Bites: Infinite treats

Finding balance among the city’s incredible bakeries.

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“Small Bites” is about exploring the broader world of food and drink in Madison through approachable and specific experiences.

The first pain aux raisins I ever had was in Paris. I picked out one of the laminated pastries that were piled high at Du Pain et des Idées, and consumed it while I walked along Canal Saint-Martin with a grin across my face the entire time. The sun was out, trees were green. The pastry flaked lightly with each bite, revealing an elegantly sweet cream filling and plump raisins. I ate the most recent one at the top of Devil’s Lake‘s East Bluffs, overlooking the basin below with Lake Wisconsin in the distance. I’d picked it up earlier in the day from Madison Sourdough, planning a treat break for the summit while enjoying the views. But, before that moment, I don’t think it registered that I hadn’t seen pain aux raisins anywhere else in my travels but a Parisian bakery.

It’s an uncommon treat, to be sure—somewhere between a laminated pastry and a sweet brioche, pain aux raisins is also full of, well, raisins. Not the preferred idea of a treat for most Americans. I’m not a huge fan of raisins in desserts, normally, but in pain aux raisins, the dried fruit is usually soaked in wine or cognac so it plumps up into little flavor bombs. The layer of pastry cream is also understated—spread thin, it’s mostly absorbed into the dough while baking. While the resulting pinwheels resemble cinnamon rolls, their flavor profile is anything but: pain aux raisins are flaky, lightly sweet, and subtle.

I’m a sucker for treats—so much so that they show up in my bloodwork. But who can blame me? I live in a city with fewer than 300,000 people, and within two miles from my house, I can get my favorite traditional French pastry whenever I want. Even closer to my front door, I can snag a pear scone from Reverie Baking Co., a salted caramel brownie from Batch Bakehouse, or a salted brown butter chocolate chip cookie from Bloom Bake Shop‘s Northstreet location. 

In the winter, I love packing a snack break for long, intense hikes. The other week my friend Trevor and I trudged out to the Pine Cliffs of Governor Nelson State Park to brew coffee in the wilderness and eat pastries before we looped around the park on a seven-mile canyon hike. Hearing our hiking boots crunch through frozen soil as we breathed in nonstop huffs of cold air made the pain suisse and cheddar croissant all the more rewarding. In the summer, I snag a handful of small treats from Batch to fuel bike rides out to Picnic Point, where I sit on deadwood trunks and watch the waves roll into the crescent beach that juts out into Lake Mendota. 

But the constant proximity to treats has allowed me to punctuate any trip out of my house with a sweet bite. Dropping my partner off for a day of grad school quickly turned into a cheeky pop-by for a Batch morning bun. Meeting an editor for coffee at the Northstreet Café Domestique was a great excuse to snag an array from Bloom. And if you’re picking up pizza from Salvatore’s Tomato Pies, why wouldn’t you get the budino? It’s the most incredible butterscotch pudding—get two. 

In that realm, I started to realize something: a treat is no longer a treat if it’s an assumed part of your day. Then it just becomes a normal part of your diet. But here’s the thing: with the quality and variety of baked goods in Madison being so high, it’s almost impossible for any of these places to lose their distinctions. I could pace back and forth in front of Batch’s glass case for hours and still feel like I could have picked out a different and better selection for my day. 

At the same time, something has to change. I have a fairly healthy diet. We eat vegetarian most days of the week at home, and we avoid fast food. We like to cook intricate meals from scratch, and most days I snack on apples and celery when I need a break from work. So, when my doctor pointed out the continual pings in my bloodwork indicating elevated blood sugar and liver enzymes, there could only be one culprit: the treats.

In the spirit of January and the start of a new year, I’m starting to re-evaluate the concept of treat. It seems odd to turn to mindfulness meditation when I’m staring at a stack of piled-high butterscotch oatmeal cookies, but maybe there’s something to the sensory experience of just being near them that I’m missing out on. 

Perhaps it’s the way that the clusters of oats flake upward and outward, creating a scattershot array of geometrical patterns in near-perfect circles. Or how the golden color of the cookies takes on a slightly varied hue as the butter and sugar melted together in the oven at varying degrees of caramelization. And then there’s the smell. Toasty, sweet—rich in a way that sneaks under the radar for a cookie with “oatmeal” in its name. Heaven. 

Maybe that’s enough—maybe I can take the time to tune into my senses and just appreciate the specialness of each cookie as an observer. Surely there’s a way to live my life when I’m examining the world I am presently in, the things I’m surrounded by, and finding joy in their presence alone. The concept of existence is one of lived experience, and who am I to say that the experience of merely looking at and smelling a dessert case isn’t one that’s as rewarding?

Or maybe I can just limit myself to one butterscotch oatmeal cookie per week. After all, I can always swing by Bradbury’s for a crepe or a scone if I’m still hungry.