Rotha French bakery storefront photo by BonjourDarlene.com

Pâtisserie Rotha is a French bakery located in Albany, California (near Berkeley), about 14 miles/ 22 km east of San Francisco.

This bakery is open three hours a day, four days a week. People queue up before it opens because it has a reputation for being so good that they often sell out of everything within two hours. For, ahem, research purposes, I recently procured some pastries to see what all the hype was about.

Waouh ! Absolutely believe the hype! It was a positive and pleasant experience from beginning to end.

For starters, parking was free and easy (in the shopping plaza across the street, that is). It’s accessible by public transportation, too. The bus stop is directly in front of the bakery’s entrance. At 8:30 on a Saturday morning, there were only seven of us in line. (As customers walked out with their boxes of baked goods, they’d leave a trailing scent of sweet butter!) Best of all, they weren’t sold out of the pastries I wanted to try, namely the canelés and an assortment of croissants.

There was one person taking orders at the counter and another person at the cashier. I appreciated how they took their time with each customer. If I’m not mistaken, I think they were the owners of Pâtisserie Rotha!

I tried an assortment of croissants: almond, butter, and chocolate, or “abc” as I like to call them. (On that day, they also had apricot and chocolate-almond flavors.) Each one was buttery and flaky!

clockwise from top: almond croissant, canelés, butter croissant, and pain au chocolat

The almond croissant had a modest amount of frangipane, but it was full of real almond flavor, not the artificial stuff (at $5 per croissant aux amandes, I would hope the ingredients were real!)

Normally, I add jam or Nutella to butter croissants, but this one didn’t need any accoutrements. The croissant au beurre was good as-is!

The pain au chocolat was airy and it was filled with a rich, semi-sweet dark chocolate.

smiling woman holding canelé brown pastry near mouth photo by Jennifer Alvarez
©️ photo by my daughter, Jennifer

As for the canelés, they were excellent. I enjoyed the shiny, slightly chewy exterior and sweet vanilla custard interior. (They also appeared a little bit taller than the ones I’d had from the French bakery-café chain called PAUL.)

I’d like to try making these rum-flavored treats, but I’ve heard it’s a time-consuming process! It’s good to know there’s a nice bakery like Pâtisserie Rotha I can go to when a canelé craving strikes – I’d just have to get there bright and early!☀️

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