Meet Rosa, the baker behind our weekend pastries

If you've ever wondered why the pastry case looks particularly good on a Saturday, the answer is Rosa. She joined us two winters ago and quietly turned our weekends into something people queue for. We pulled her aside between trays — flour to the elbows, as always — to talk shop.

Three days for one croissant

“People think a croissant is a morning's work,” she says, laughing. “It's three days. You make the dough, you laminate it with the butter, you rest it, you fold, you rest it again.” Each fold builds the dozens of paper-thin layers that puff up and shatter when you bite in.

Her one non-negotiable is temperature. “Everything stays cold — the butter, the bench, my hands. The moment the butter softens too much, it melts into the dough instead of layering, and you lose the whole thing.” On warm days she works fast and early, before the kitchen heats up.

The best part of the job

Rosa is in before the birds, usually around four. She doesn't mind. “There's a stretch around six, when the first bake comes out and the whole room smells of butter and the sun's just coming up. On a rainy morning especially — that's the best feeling there is.”

Come the weekend, get there early. When Rosa's croissants are gone, they're gone, and she refuses to rush the next batch just because there's a queue. Honestly, we wouldn't want her to.