Richaud Valls started baking baguettes in his West Village apartment. Now his quarantine baking habit has turned into a growing, viable business
Richaud Valls started baking baguettes in his West Village apartment. Photo: Richaud Valls. Photo-Illustration: Megan Paetzhold During the early months of New York’s COVID-19 pandemic, there were a few evening rituals that brought at least some comfort to West Village residents: the familiar chimes of the ice cream truck, clapping at 7 p.m. for health heroes, and a Frenchman covered in flour making bike deliveries.
“In the neighborhood, they call me the bread guy,” says Richaud Valls, a 48-year-old French actor who’s lived in New York City for a decade. At the beginning of the shutdown, Instagram looked like one big sourdough starter, of course. Valls, like so many others, began baking to pass the time and stay creative. After sharing his creations with friends and posting on Instagram, Valls began to receive inquiries from people asking how they could buy his baguettes. Valls’s creations are smaller than your typical baguette — on purpose. Valls says it’s so “you can eat it in one sitting.
Now, what started as a couple of orders a day has turned into ten-hour days and, if he doesn’t start the dough at night, 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls to give it time to rise. Valls delivers six varieties fresh every day to most of Manhattan, with a weekly Brooklyn stop. Curious to learn more, Grub Street talked to Valls about how he turned his quarantine baking habit into a growing, viable business.I’ve always cooked, but I just started baking about two years ago. I tried to make baguettes, but it didn’t work. I tried so many times. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but it was a mess. The consistency was too thick. I redid it over and over and over again. My friends didn’t even want to try them anymore. So I stopped.
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