The smell of morning coffee and croissants can adjust your attitude for the entire day. And Buffalo Doughboy in Denver’s West Washington Park neighborhood is just such a place to start your day off on the right foot.
Clark Eaton started this small bakery seven years ago. He and his staff of “dough girls” come in before the crack of dawn every morning to have a case full of pastries ready by the time the shop opens at 6:30 a.m.
The bakery makes cookies, truffles, cupcakes, ganache coated chocolate pastries, paninis, loaves of bread, scones, smoothies, coffee and espresso. The queen cake, layers of chocolate sheet cake filled with chocolate mousse and coated in ganache, makes regular appearances in the sweets case at Buffalo Doughboy, but selections vary according to the season and Clark’s mood.
Buttery stuffed croissants and chewy filled brioche buns are the most popular items at Buffalo Doughboy. And of those, the Farmer’s Croissant – filled with French sheep’s milk, feta cheese, fresh minced red, green and yellow peppers, tomatoes and scallions – is the top seller.
Eaton makes lots of other stuffed croissants, including typical varieties such as chocolate or spinach and feta, for which he uses mammoth chunks of feta and whole fresh spinach leaves. Some favorite specialty croissants are the Kermit, made with sharp Welsh cheddar, apple onion chutney and bacon, and the sweet crocodile, filled with apples then topped with cinnamon, pecan and brown sugar.
Soft and chewy brioche buns with savory stuffings like Italian sausage, chimichurri sauce and pepper jack, real French camembert cheese or English Stilton blue cheese, are huge and toasty brown.
One of the sweetest parts of noshing at the Buffalo Doughboy is the fact that they only bake a few of their croissants, brioche buns, scones and danishes at a time, and replenish the case batch by batch all morning, so everything is very fresh. And if you can’t decide what you want, you can just ask for whatever’s still warm.
Located on the corner of East Dakota Avenue and Lincoln Street, Buffalo Doughboy shares the ground floor of a funky little Victorian-era house with Joanne Renna Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine Clinic. Joanne lives upstairs with her pooch and fiancé. The house has a colorful past. It was a hippie commune in the ‘70s, and some of the bakery’s regular customers remember playing in the house when they were hippie babies.
Eaton and the Dough Girls support local business at every turn. The foyer of the house is stocked with wine jellies and jams from Colorado wine country in Palisade. They sell many varieties of local sauces and salad dressings, and brew locally roasted Coda coffee. They stock Izze soda, a local favorite from Boulder, and Zuberfizz sodas from Durango.
The yellow room, which was probably a bedroom or dining room of the old house, is now used for seating and has mix-matched tables and chairs strewn with potted plants, books and magazines. Wireless internet is free at Buffalo Doughboy, but limited to one user at a time. The café scene is more one of sipping and socializing than students and java junkies wired up to their laptops.
The Buffalo Doughboy front porch and yard are stocked with patio tables and chairs to enjoy Denver’s famously sunny spring and summer mornings.
The bakery is open from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Pastries cost between $2 and $4. Panini ingredients vary, but are always $6. Coffee drinks are competitively priced, and fresh drip coffee is free on Thursdays.
If You Go
Buffalo Doughboy Bakery
33 E. Dakota Ave.
Denver, Colorado 80209
303-722-9477