• Matthew Thorsen
• Vergennes Laundry

Handmade nougat and canelés fill the display case. The wood-fired oven turns out crusty baguettes. Even the small Vermont city that hosts this unique bakery-café has a Gallic name. The Vergennes Laundry is already so French, there's no need to shout it from the rooftops.

Days start à la française at 7 a.m. with croissants and coffee — the latter made either slow-drip style or using a manual Chemex coffeemaker. The Laundry's hot chocolate is steamed milk poured slowly over three homemade, soon-to-be-melted crème fraîche truffles.

Those who dally long enough — or arrive later — can choose from a wide range of rustic French-style pastries. Plump morning buns are far more intéressant than your standard cinnamon roll. Instead of saccharine frosting, the tender pastry is rolled in sugar crystals and citrus zest.

• Matthew Thorsen
• Vergennes Laundry

The gougères would please even a gauloise Goldilocks; neither too crisp nor too mushy, they're just right. And there's a locavore element: Rather than Gruyère or another Alpine cheese, the fluffy choux pastry holds Vermont's Grafton Village Cheese cheddar.

Other Green Mountain ingredients, such as fresh-picked sorrel and celeriac, turn up in daily soups and sandwiches.

The bakery-café is part Europe, part New World, and that also describes the couple who started it all — in a former laundromat — with money they raised on Kickstarter. Baker Julianne Jones came to Vermont to attend Middlebury College and met French expat and now-husband Didier Murat. "Ironically, the Frenchman isn't the baker," Jones told Food & Wine magazine in a glowing story about the place.

But Jones owes at least some of her culinary skills to a three-month apprenticeship with Westford-based French baker Gérard Rubaud — who, like Jones and Murat, proves every day how well Vermont terroir and French recipes go together.

This article was originally published in 7 Nights: The Seven Days Guide to Vermont Restaurants & Bars in April 2014.