Aurore Adam, previously of Paris, opened her traditional French bakery in Bozeman in 2023 as a way of sharing her heritage with Montana.
It may be hard to realize, but there were some good things that came out of the COVID pandemic. Remote work became acceptable. We all learned how to Marie Kondo our lives. No-contact pizza delivery is now a thing. And, maybe best of all, Bozeman got its new French bakery, Aurore, tucked away in a cool industrial development on West Baxter Lane north of Four Corners.
In March of 2020, when the world shut down, Aurore Adam was on holiday from her busy life as a real estate agent in Paris, visiting her twin sister, Alison, in Bozeman. Alison had come to the States as an exchange student to study law in Vermont and found her way to Montana a few years later.
“I came to Bozeman a few days before they closed the border,” Aurore remembers. “I could not go back to France because all the flights were canceled, since I was the only one traveling and all the planes were empty.”
This wasn’t the first time she and her sister had found themselves living together someplace new. At 20, they had left the sunny beaches of Southern France and moved to Paris to be fashion models. They loved the fun and exciting lifestyle, living in one of the world’s most glamorous cities.
Now, 5,000 miles from home and experiencing the tail end of winter, spring, and the beginning of summer in Montana, Aurore quickly fell in love with what she found in Big Sky Country. “I really enjoyed the lifestyle,” she says. “There were very few COVID cases, and we were always outside skiing or mountain biking, just experiencing all Montana has to offer.”
The only sticking point was she missed France’s iconic boulangeries, which are on almost every corner in Paris and in every town, no matter how small or remote. “All I could think of was bakeries,” she says. “There weren’t very many here, and the ones that were used American flour, which is hard for me and a lot of other people to digest.” She also missed the baguette-style sandwiches popular in French bakeries.
All this percolated in the back of her mind as she decided she wanted to move to Bozeman and knew she needed a job. First, she started training to be a real estate agent, but she learned that because she’s not a U.S. citizen, she’s barred from that job—as well as a few others, like airline pilot or president of the United States.
Since real estate was the only skill she could use to apply for a work visa, her alternative was to create her own business and apply for a Treaty Investor E2 Visa. “The French are known for their culinary expertise, so I thought, ‘What can I bring to the U.S. that makes me unique and legit because of my French origins?’” she explains.
She considered making champagne, but she doesn’t really drink. Cheese was next on the list, but farming is not her thing. “Then I thought, ‘The French have bakeries,’” she recalls. “This was during the time when everyone was making bread at home, including my sister and I, so we looked at each other, and I said, ‘OK, I’m going to open a bakery in Bozeman.’”
After finally making it back to Paris, she met with her real estate team and told them she was leaving her high-paid career to open a bakery in the U.S. They thought she was joking. But this was no whim, which Aurore proved by taking unpaid apprenticeships at seven different bakeries in Paris and near her parents’ home in the Alps from June 2020 to January 2021.
All of this occurred during the height of the pandemic, but luckily for Aurore, in France croissants and baguettes are considered essential. “Everything was shut down but the bakeries,” she says. “I had to have a paper saying what I was doing because the only people who could drive and go to work were the doctors, nurses, and bakers.”
One of her mentors was culinary rock star Gontran Cherrier, a fourth-generation baker, cookbook author, TV host, and worldwide boulangerie magnate. “He has a lot of bakeries all over the world, and it was important for me to see how he imports French culture to other countries and is able to make authentic French food outside of the country,” Aurore says.
If you think learning to make a perfect croissant or fluffy brioche on a par with the experts she trained with is hard (and it is!), Aurore will tell you the most difficult obstacles she faced were COVID restrictions and immigration. “Because of all the travel restrictions due to the pandemic, I couldn’t come back directly to the U.S. from Paris, so I had to spend 14 days in Bogota, Colombia, to quarantine,” she says.
This began a tumultuous period for Aurore, who had to come and go from the U.S. whenever her 90-day tourist visa expired. This included multiple trips to Colombia and Costa Rica and being held in a cell at the Dallas airport on multiple occasions. “Trying to get into the country and get a visa was such a nightmare that it made me sick,” she says. “My immigration attorney told me to give up. I said, ‘Hell no! I have no choice; I am not taking no for an answer!’”
Finally, in March 2022, she got her E2 Visa. She found backing from local investor Tom Pratt, and with the support of her sister (who you can often find in the kitchen and at local events with Aurore), her landlord Tyson Olson, and the local French and foodie communities that contributed to her Kickstarter campaign, she started Aurore French Bakery, selling her creations at local farmers markets before opening her brick-and-mortar shop in May 2023.
Being from France, where there is a law dictating how traditional baguettes must be made, Aurore is dedicated to the authenticity of her craft. That means using French ingredients like Moulins Bourgeois flour, Isigny Sainte-Mère butter, Cacao Barry chocolate, and Kawa coffee roasted in Paris.
Importing French ingredients is key because they are the reason for the rich flavors of the bakery’s final products and that unique je ne sais quoi taste. “The flour is very light, so when it bakes, it creates a honeycomb of air pockets when layered with the butter. The butter is special because it has a higher fusion point; the same goes for the chocolate,” Aurore explains. “Because of that, they don’t melt out of the croissants, and you get that lovely buttery texture and sweet filling.”
Being from France, where there is a law dictating how traditional baguettes must be made, Aurore is dedicated to the authenticity of her craft.
As you might expect, the classic menu items like the traditional baguettes, sourdough bread, tartes, crêpes, and a variety of croissants (chocolate, almond, ham and cheese, and rotating special flavors) are the stars. But don’t sleep on Aurore’s own creation, the Pépite, a brioche that combines vanilla bean crème pâtissière and chocolate chips. (Full disclosure: This is my personal favorite.) “I was trying to make a pain suisse, but I couldn’t get the filling to stay inside the bun,” Aurore says. “So instead, I rolled it and created a swirl and sliced it, and it turned out different and great.”
While the French elements are the heart and soul of the shop, products from her adopted home have found their way into the bakery, including fresh huckleberries during the summertime, Livingston’s Front Porch Chocolate bars and sipping chocolate, Lake Missoula Tea Company flavorful teas, and Daniel’s Gourmet Meats & Sausages, which are featured in the sandwiches. Also, if you’re lucky, you can find Aurore’s chocolate chip cookies at Cholms Burger food truck on North 7th Avenue.
Now that it’s easier for her to travel back to her homeland, this summer Aurore brought five of her employees to France to experience the country’s legendary cuisine and learn some tricks. Inspired by their experiences and training with French bakers, they’ve changed up the rum in the Canelé de Bordeaux and the dough in the Pépites, and for lunch they’ve added a pizza and a new sandwich they call the Chevrette, featuring goat cheese, arugula, fig jam, butter, and walnuts. “It’s been selling out every day,” Aurore says.
The bakery is open Thursday through Sunday, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. The sandwiches are available every day, and pizza is offered on the weekends. Aurore also does private events and weddings, and, in the future, baking classes might be on the horizon. “We’re trying to make it happen, but we’re so busy we haven’t been able to set it up yet,” she says.
Recently, Aurore received a letter from Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen congratulating her on her shop being voted the best bakery in Montana. Though Aurore says with a laugh, “I was not expecting that,” anyone who has eaten her baked creations probably did.
