There is a story behind the phrase “13–a baker’s dozen”. In the days when bread was sold by weight, bakers regularly gave customers an extra +1, or 13 items, on every dozen sold. There were strict penalties if found guilty of shorting the customer. Since loaves easily varied in size and weight, they made a practice of “giving more”. Today, generous bakeries might offer a “freebie” as a courtesy for buying a dozen.

Laurel Sanderson was a baker long before she decided to open a restaurant in the back of a Paris courtyard. She comes from a line of southern home cooks and bakers going back to her mother and grandmother in upper Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

At twenty years old, Laurel took off to learn French–in France. She immediately found other English-speaking friends doing the same thing. The combined excitement of new friendships and travel initially slowed the process of acquiring a second language.

After four years of polishing her French and having fun, she moved to Paris and began working in a bar off rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter. There, a group of same-age ex-pats from all over the world bonded in friendship. Most of them stayed on. They gravitated from those beginning days of tending bar to the grown up world of food and beverage distribution, management, organizational planning, and in Laurel’s case–a bakery.

Fast-forward another fifteen years–after starting a family and ending her bakery business partnership, Laurel discovered a former auto garage, at the far end of a centuries old cobblestoned courtyard, in the middle of Paris. She envisioned a new enterprise, all her own, and named it Treize…a baker’s dozen.

For the first two years, after opening in January 2014, Laurel managed with irregular part time help that came and went. Finally, in February 2016, she asked a friend from those early bartending days to join her full time.

Kaysa von Sydow is Swedish. For many years, she owned a special events business with food and beverages. Now she runs the front-of-the-house at Treize, which highlights her engaging people skills along with creative coffee, tea, juices, and drinks. She brings the best of Swedish café culture [Fika]–savouring the moment, slowing down, making time every day for a break with coffee, tea, a baked good and [perhaps] some friendly gossip. She also sources the best products for variety and bio-freshness.

Laurel now focuses on lighting up the kitchen space, as well as the whole restaurant, with whatever she is doing: cooking, baking or treating customers as life-long friends.

Why did a southern girl from South Carolina open a miniscule resto in a space that evolved from a storage workshop for antiques, to a jeweler’s workshop, to a hair salon, to a mechanic’s garage? When asked how she made the switch from full time baking to chef she replies, “It was actually pretty easy. People want pastry, but people need food.”

There’s more to it than that, of course. She missed the tastes and recipes from her southern American roots. She wasn’t planning to return to Charleston because “home” was now Paris, with a husband and children. So she created her own style of southern comfort cooking and opened it to the public.

When you push open the many-paned glass door at Treize, it’s like walking into a favorite friend’s quirky kitchen and dining room combined. It’s highly organized with floor to ceiling storage, but overflowing with jars and baskets and tins and spices, hanging cast iron and copper pots, piles of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Even the windowpane grills hold ripening avocadoes. There are flea market finds decorating out-of-reach shelves; vintage muffin tins, dough cutters, cake pans, antique copper or enamel cafetières. There is a gargoyle. And cookbooks tucked in everywhere.

On the largest wooden table, there is a seasonal flower arrangement next to a stacked pile of “Garden and Gun” magazines. [Laurel’s favorite periodical, from Charleston, y’all.] In the corner by the door, birch tree trunks support curling dried vines that snake upward toward the skylight. Vines decorated seasonally, of course. An antique glass chandelier hangs from the pressed tin ceiling. On one wall is a black and white mural of a little girl swinging meditatively into the air. Opposite, a chalkboard sign reads “In Buttermilk Biscuits We Trust” along with the recipe for this daily served bread.

It’s an eclectic use of very small space. Vintage, antique-y, industrial-ish, chic/messy/favorite auntie décor are all terms that describe Treize. Your senses respond instinctively to the all-embracing ambience. Capturing any empty stool or chair, you melt into the friendliness AND the delicious food smells. It is the sanctuary you were dreaming to find–an escape in an accelerated world.

The kitchen is an incredibly small working space, but open to everything. As soon as anyone enters, Laurel and/or Kaysa look up with huge smiles and say, “Heeeeyyyyy, how are you? Come on in!” If they know your name, you are greeted with bisous [xx] too. By now, they know practically everyone who walks in, from around the globe.

The recipes change by the day and the season. Menus are based on traditional family recipes that Laurel grew up eating. Some are inspired from The Southern Cookbook. All have been updated and improved with Laurel’s creativity and by sourcing 100% bio ingredients. Top-notch staples of butter, flour, cream, sugar, seasonal fruits and veggies are easily found in Paris. They make everything taste better.

Everyday, Laurel bakes light-as-a-feather, melt-in-your-mouth buttermilk biscuits. [More than 40,000 since Treize opened!] Everyday, there is a three-tiered butter-cream-frosted carrot cake under glass. Laurel’s carrot cake is inspired. It is her own particular version. People come in just because they have heard about it. They return because they are hooked by everything else about Treize, too.

Laurel generally arrives first, very early in the morning. This is her quiet time to bake–biscuits, cakes [one or two in addition to carrot cake], and small pastries for savory tarts. Kaysa arrives next, soon followed by the current prep-cooks, Sam and Anne. Alam arrives last, but stays well past closing to finish cleaning and setting up for the next day. He moves quietly and knowingly in the back of the kitchen. By late afternoon, he nudges Laurel out to sit down for a moment.

After hours of multi-tasking: chatting up customers, overseeing and doing preps, sorting out Kaysa’s orders over the din of customers, unceasing chopping, cooking, baking– finally, it’s late afternoon and a special time to be at Treize. A bottle of wine is often opened and glasses poured. There may be time for more in-depth conversation while sitting on high stools around a tall table peeling oranges and lemons for the next day’s juices. It’s my favorite time to be there. I join in and the prep work goes faster.

I’ve spent many hours at Treize since stumbling into this hidden gem of a courtyard three years ago. I have taken friends or out-of-town guests or my family. I especially love going alone. In this coziest of environments, I find my better self.

There are stories about other people who find Treize, too. A family of five from Luxembourg was visiting Paris. They were looking for food after normal restaurant hours on a frigid wintery day. No place would serve them. They staggered into Treize–cold, tired and famished. Arms readily opened to hold the baby while mom ate her meal. The other children were nourished. Everyone was nurtured. They return every year.

A honeymooning couple scanned a fashion blogger’s website where Treize was mentioned and happily lingered over lunch and several rounds of beverages. A weekly table of mothers and babies has been coming in since before the babies were born. “Paris by Mouth” [restaurant review website] rents the large table several times a week to end their tourist walking tours with wine and cheese. A stream of regulars working in the area, bring in their own plates or coffee cups to be filled and taken back to work. A professional chess player, who summers every year in Paris, eats there weekly, if not more. A newcomer, curious about what he saw at the end of an ambient courtyard, walks in and claims his new favourite place in Paris. People find Treize. And they return.

The success of Treize is not hard to understand. But there are subtle, even humble, layers mixed into the daily joy of achievement. For Laurel, Treize is not about her or what she has built. It is about the connectedness created with everyone who walks in the door. It’s a throw back to an environment beautifully crafted twenty years ago in a bar off rue Mouffetard, where customers became friends. Sharing back-stories and experiences, staying in touch with each other’s lives, supporting one another through thick and thin. Both Laurel and Kaysa are masters of weaving friendship into work they love.

The essence of Treize, the thing that lingers, is this–no matter the time of day or the moment in the week or whatever else is going on in the world, when you push open the door, you always feel glad to be exactly there. It’s about broad smiles and sparkling eyes.  It’s about lighthearted banter between co-workers doing what they love to do. It’s about warm greetings to everyone, every single time. It’s the kind of place where you want to know their names and their stories. And they want to know yours, too.

There is a feeling of receiving something “more” each time you go. And that’s because the heart of Treize is not simply a baker’s dozen, it’s a baker’s soul…

 

Addendum July 2018:

Treize has a re-opened in a new and larger location across from Jardin du Luxembourg. Check their website for menu offerings and hours. No reservations. 5, rue de Médicis, Paris, 75006

http://www.treizebakeryparis.com