Linda Falkenstein
Bloom Bake Shop is a cheerful, sun-drenched, locavore-centric bakery in downtown Middleton. Presided over by baker Annemarie Maitri, it’s become known in the last five years as providing some of the best vegan baked goods around.
Maitri has slowly expanded the vegan picks. Now every day the front glass case is filled with the shop’s classic sweets — doughnuts, cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, brownies and cookies — with half the case devoted to those made with dairy; the other half, vegan.
Now the bakery has introduced a savory option – a farmer-fresh version of a breakfast sandwich made with Southern-style biscuits. Crispy on the outside, tender and fluffy on the inside, the biscuits, too, come in a vegan version, as do the sandwich contents.
Maitri says she loves the smell of savory that now permeates Bloom. Each breakfast sandwich is made up fresh; commuters and others in a rush are welcome to call in their orders, says Maitri. On Saturdays, there’s often a line waiting for the bakery to open at 7 a.m.; once, they sold out of the biscuits by 11 a.m.
The basic sandwich, called the Wisconsin, features Murphy Farms butter, Pecatonica Valley Farm eggs and bacon, Hawkwind mustard, Cedar Grove cheese and Organic Valley buttermilk. The vegan version, the Homegrown, is new for spring, with roasted parsnips, caramelized onions, a few leaves of fresh spinach and fresh herbs.
Maitri says she worked on the vegan biscuit (it’s also gluten-free) for two months so that it “wouldn’t be a hockey puck.” But now that she’s come up with a special blend of six flours, it’s hard to tell the difference between the dairy and the vegan product. The exteriors are equally crispy; the vegan biscuit’s interior is perhaps ever so slightly more dense.
Maitri, whose family hails from Louisiana, says she “had a vision” of what she wanted. “It’s an art to get height on a biscuit.”
Some commuters have gently suggested that height makes the biscuit hard to eat while driving. But, says Maitri with a smile, “Slowing down is our whole message.”
