Sitting just a few miles outside the Houston County line, Newburg Vintage Home & Garden and Small Batch Bakery is one of a few places visited during my residency not technically in Minnesota’s Houston County.
This piece is part of a larger project to document the culinary resilience of southeastern Minnesota’s Houston County during the pandemic. You can read more about my Crystal Creek Citizen-Artist Residency project here.
On a recent visit to Nettle Valley Farm in Spring Grove, I’m told for about the fourth time that I must go to Newburg Vintage Home & Garden and Small Batch Bakery. I receive some solid intel: They’re only open Saturdays. Their croissants are incredible! And order ahead because they run out. This time something clicks, and I finally take action. I look up the bakery online and place a pre-order for croissants.
We leave Decorah on a sunny Saturday in early September and head north. Our 30-minute drive takes us through new territory and gravel roads. Out of nowhere, we pull up to an unassuming intersection and there it is: Newburg Vintage Home & Garden and Small Batch Bakery, one of only a handful of buildings in the unincorporated community of Newburg, MN.
It’s just minutes after the 11:00am opening time, but already a long line of people waits to get inside. The shop is filled to maximum COVID-19 capacity as masked customers browse baked goods and garden supplies. The rest of us wait outside in a socially-distanced line that grows longer by the minute. With the sun beating down and the shaded porch full of people in front of us, it’s unseasonably hot. We gulp down cups of lemon water from the water cooler.
When COVID-19 regulations were implemented in late March, Newburg Vintage Home & Garden and Small Batch Bakery was able to continue offering pastries and baked goods for curbside pickup, takeout, and free delivery to Mabel, MN. Their croissant-making classes (with 142 signups) had to be cancelled.
A gentleman comes out and asks if anyone pre-ordered. We step forward, relieved to abandon the long queue. He returns with a teal box filled with eight croissants, perhaps an excessive number for two people, but we absolutely had to try them all – four plain, 2 Dubliner cheese, 1 almond, and 1 pain au chocolat. Each croissant is $3.50, which feels like a bargain considering the extensive croissant-making process.
Their croissants take three days to make. The dough is mixed on Wednesdays in preparation for Saturday. In addition to croissants, they make all kinds of delectable treats: brioche, eclairs, cream puffs, hand pies, mini pies, galettes, cookies, scones, cupcakes, and bars. After three days of prep work, baking begins Friday night at 10:00pm and ends Saturday morning at 9:00am in time to cool, frost, garnish, fill the pastry case, and box up pre-orders. An impressive feat!
My first bite reveals the expertise of this small batch bakery. The plain croissant is flaky and oh, so buttery. The Dubliner cheese is my favorite with its salty, cheesy perfection, though all are exceptionally delicious. We sit at a small cafe table on the patio inhaling our croissants aware of the 15 people standing in line for this bakery amidst the cornfields. Eventually, the hot sun drives us out, otherwise we could have stayed all morning finishing off our box of croissants with no trouble at all.
This morning excursion is yet another example of the riches to be found in the rural areas of the Driftless region. We may not have the bustle of cities, but we have gems like Newburg Vintage Garden & Home and Small Batch Bakery, and that is enough. What we need is here, as Wendell Berry says.
Irene Fishburn, who owns Newburg Vintage Home & Garden and Small Batch Bakery with her husband, Glenn, is participating in The Greatest Baker contest from Bake From Scratch Magazine. The winner receives a feature article in the magazine and $10,000. Irene hopes to use the winnings to buy a new commercial oven, as their current oven is unreliable. Read her post about the contest here.
Join me in voting for Newburg Vintage Home & Garden and Small Batch Bakery. Click here to vote. You can vote once a day! Voting ends November 5th, 2020.
Elisabeth A. Fondell is a writer, potter, and food enthusiast living in the rural Midwest. She is currently working on Food Stories From Houston County, a project documenting stories of culinary resilience in Minnesota’s southeastern-most county through the Crystal Creek Citizen-Artist Residency.
Elisabeth began focusing on place-based food writing after receiving a grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council to create a body of work celebrating the intersection of food and culture. See that exhibit here.
