A Taste of the French Countryside in the East Village
Martha Stewart approves.
The Deligram shines a spotlight on the many incredible food artisans in New York. In our last feature, we featured Amadou Ly, who is about to open ALF Bakery in Chelsea Market. This week’s issue spotlights another baker who has recently signed a lease: Lucie Franc de Ferriere of From Lucie. Unlike Ly, who trained as a fine dining pastry chef, Franc de Ferriere learned how to bake from her mother. When she lost her job at the start of the pandemic, she turned her passion for making cakes and pastries into a career. We first featured Franc de Ferriere in November 2021, in a roundup of great dessert makers, but now, we’re diving deeper.
And, as a special treat, we’re announcing our first Deligram collab!
The Deligram x From Lucie’s drop is one of her mother’s recipes: a Chocolate Stout Rosemary Fromage Frais sheet cake. Each slice is $12, and there are only 32 available. 10 pre-orders are reserved for our premium subscribers. (If that’s you, scroll to the end of this email for a link to reserve! If not, what are you waiting for?) For everyone else, we’ll let you know when the remaining orders become available or visit From Lucie’s East Village location on April 8 to pick up a slice in person (but no guarantees, her products move FAST).
The Product: Beautifully decorated floral cakes that blend British and French styles.
The Deli Pick: Brown butter carrot cake with fromage frais buttercream.
How To Buy: Visit their storefront at 263 E 10th Street from Thursday to Sunday, 11am-7pm.
Price: $4 for a cookie, $10-$12 for a slice of cake, $17 for a mini cake, and large cakes available by request.
I learned to bake at home, mainly from my mother. I grew up in France on a vineyard, about an hour away from Bordeaux in a small town called Pessac-sur-Dordogne. My dad created the vineyard, which was also a farm with around 50 cows, chickens, cats, dogs…even a donkey named Billy. My mother made the house into something like a bed & breakfast. She would always have people for dinner, and there was always cake. She also wanted to really open a small cake shop/tea room/wine bar on the farm, which she did a few years ago. I learned a lot of tips and tricks from her — what kind of makes the cake nicer, which buttercream works better, etc. I started with all of her recipes. My mother is originally from New Zealand, so my cakes are inspired by both my French and Kiwi sides. New Zealand was invaded by England, and is still part of the Commonwealth, so a lot of our cakes are British-inspired — Victoria sponge, other classic sponge cakes with a twist based on the ingredients native to remote New Zealand. A lot of people say, "oh, you're French, you must love refined pastry,” but I never kind of grew up going to the bakery and having a croissant every day – it was a lot more homemade baked goods. So my cakes have the more rustic look of the countryside versus a refined Parisian pastry.
When I moved to New York I was baking at home mainly for friends, giving cake away. And then when COVID hit I lost my job working at an art gallery. That's when I was like, “Maybe I can do this for a living and not just for my friends.” I never planned to leave the art world for baking. It really came as a surprise. I got fired the day that New York went into lockdown, and lost my visa the week after. It was April 2020. I was like, “I don’t even want to get on a plane, because you could die on the plane…” Pivoting to baking was very much a 180° change. In my head I was always like, “it would be a nice little dream to bake from my own place and sell my own cakes online,” but it was always a running joke. My fiancé Gurpreet Singh had just opened his cafe Sunday to Sunday on the Lower East Side the week before COVID hit. Terrible timing, but then he was able to open with just his takeout window, selling coffees and pastries. So many places that distributed pastries to coffee shops were also shut down. Meanwhile I was at home and wanted to be more creative with my hands, so I started working on a few pastries. I started making cookies and banana bread, just kind of having fun with my creative side.
I baked in the basement of his cafe/restaurant for a year and a half, and I realized “people are coming back for the baked goods… maybe that means I’m not so bad at it?” I also realized that I enjoy making cakes more than anything else, so I started specializing in cakes, doing pop-ups around the city where people actually showed up. I did a pop up at Alimentari Flaneur in Essex Market. It was the first time I made the mini cakes, and I covered them in flowers. That’s when the whole “thing” of this bakery popped out to me. Lots of people, especially influencers, came that weekend. They started posting pictures of the mini cakes, and then it grew really fast. I think what initially caught people’s eye were the fresh flowers and these tiny cakes. Then I started my website where people could pre-order them.
For the two years between working out of the cafe and opening the storefront, I baked from my apartment, which is obviously pretty tiny; I quickly realized I needed something bigger, and I needed a consistent place for people to come pick up orders. I liked the idea of having a storefront, but mostly I needed an actual professional kitchen and a professional oven, which has been life-changing. I needed to find a rent that was really low, and a small enough space I could afford without having a heart attack about expenses every month. I knew I didn’t want any outside investors coming in. This is something so personal. Having someone from the outside who maybe wouldn’t really understand my taste or telling me what to do would have been a bit hard. I had to take out a loan as well, so I’ve really been on my own financially for this project.That’s when I decided to do the Kickstarter, which really helped a lot – especially for equipment, like a commercial stand mixer and a commercial oven, which were way more expensive than I thought. I worked with my friend Marina to make a video that tells my story. It was very, very helpful.
