La Bakeri de Jean

Jean-Louis Monteil, a veteran baker, started his own shop in Torshov. What he didn’t expect, however, is that popularity would come so fast and so suddenly—literally overnight.

The bakery, La Bakeri de Jean, is located at Bentsebrugata 11C, right by the Akers river, on the ground floor of a residential building. We arrived on a Saturday. Around 11 o’clock, a small queue had already formed outside. Standing in the queue was a mixed group: young people coming alone or with friends, families with small children, middle-aged neighbours dropping by in jogging suits. What they all waited for were the freshly baked cinnamon buns.

Behind the counter was Monteil, the owner and baker, busy shoveling doughs around in what appeared to be a pizza oven. “Another 10 minutes!” he told the anticipating crowd in English with a big smile. On the counter, there were a couple of scones, bread buns and sunflower seed bread left, with Monteil’s wife working as the cashier.

Monteil is a baker with a stellar career behind him. Starting out as a young baker at the age of 18, he went to London to work under the famous baker Maison Blanc. Among their illustrious clients is the Buckingham Palace, which means that the late Queen Elisabeth II enjoyed their baguettes and scones on a regular basis, if not every day. Arriving in Oslo in 2002, Monteil worked in several well-known Norwegian bakeries, including Åpent Bakeri. He is also one of the founders of the bakery Brødbakerne in Bærum, which was later sold to the Stavanger-based bakery chain Kanelsnurren.

Having lived in Norway for 22 years and made “more than half a million cinnamon buns”—he told us, he understood the Norwegian language well but still did not speak it. This seemed to have created a bit of a problem for him to get a job with some Norwegian bakeries, not to mention other difficulties he observed in the industry. Many of the big chains make the bakers work from 6 pm to the early hours of the next day to make the bread and pastries, in order to meet the logistical schedule. “But then the buns are no longer fresh!” Monteil said, with an emphasis.

Here in Torshov, he found a place to start his own shop and was now able to run a neighbourhood bakery in the way he wanted. Now he could start the work early in the morning, making sure everything, when served, was still fresh. The shop was originally a pizza place—that explained why he was baking with a pizza oven. The interior was simple: two wooden branches with a string of light bulbs coiled around them serving as lamps, an empty fridge yet to be filled with drinks, and a pair of bar stools by a small counter.

Now the cinnamon buns were ready. Fresh out of the oven, the buns were crispy on the top and the bottom, but still moist inside, and extremely tasty. Many bakeries choose to spray syrup on the surface during baking, to keep the buns moist and glazed, but Monteil wanted to do it in a more traditional way by glazing the buns with an egg wash. The trick is then to mix brown sugar with white sugar and sprinkle it on top for extra crunch and caramel flavor.

We also tried one of his cardamom buns which was equally good, if not better. The bun has a strong natural cardamom flavour, mixed with a rich and lingering butter fragrance, both further enhanced by its warmth and freshness. This was among the best—and definitely the most fresh—cardamom buns we have tried in Oslo.

The bakery opened on October 6th, and the couple basically kept everything from the previous pizza place. This was also why the shop was in its current status. After the first few quiet days, news of a new French neighbourhood bakery broke out on social media, and people from all over the city started to flood in to the little bakery. On a regular work day, he needs to prepare at least 100 cinnamon buns alone, not to mention other bread and pastries. Within three hours on the Saturday we visited, he already sold more than double that amount. Now he prepared at least 400 cinnamon buns every day for the weekends.

In the future, Monteil has plans to roll out more French pastries, “croissants, pain au chocolat, and they will be made in a more traditional way”, he said. We look forward to coming back for a second visit.