Jim Pasquierello casually talks about genoise, ganache and buttercream, and name-drops mousse, meringue and almandine the way others reference Helton, Tulowitski and Gonzalez.
While he may speak fluent French pastry, Pasquierello talks with an unmistakably Aurora accent.
Standing behind the cookie-filled counter at Daniel’s of Paris, he smiles in amazement at his circuitous journey from selling drywall to dishing pain au chocolat.
After all, it’s not like he grew up eating profiteroles for breakfast.
Although born in Denver, Pasquierello was raised in Aurora and attended Regis High School. “I lived on Yosemite when all those houses were band new,” he said.
“At that time Fizsimons seemed like it was far, far away and I-225 hadn’t even been built.”
He left town for several decades as he worked in construction and then sold drywall and roofing supplies up and down the East Coast. “After 9-11, the business dried up and my age worked against me,” he said.
That’s when his second “life” began. “I figured that people would always have to eat so I enrolled in a culinary school in Atlanta,” he said, but noted that he never got to take the pastry course. Coincidentally, he came back for a funeral and saw a sales ad for a working bakery in Aurora that was “a good business with a good reputation.”
“It just sounded right,” he said and in 2002 he came home and purchased Daniel’s of Paris from Daniel Chaplain, a third generation baker from France.
While living and working from Maine to Florida, Pasquierello appreciated the small independent bakeries that seemed to thrive in every small town. “That’s the kind of place I wanted to have,” he said.
The reality of owning his own place was an almost immediate wake-up call, he recalls. “I understood the back end. I didn’t realize what it took to run the front end of the business: stocking the case, deliveries, ordering,” he said. But he instantly gets a glint in his eye as he gives a tour of the glass cases filled with tortes and a baker’s dozen of cookie styles from meringues to langue du chat (cat’s tongues) licked with chocolate. His two daughters and three grandchildren who live nearby “love to stop by for cookies,” he said.
Among the best-sellers at the shop are the sticky pecan rolls, cinnamon rolls, and Danish which he bakes in the middle of the night. For the bakery’s famous pain au chocolat, he rolls out buttery croissant dough and wraps it around slices of serious semi-sweet chocolate. He leaves the tortes and fancier pastries to pastry chef Kathy Dougherty, a recent graduate of Denver’s Johnson & Wales University, and her crew who work in the tiny kitchen.
That includes tortes like the “Elodie,” a chocolate genoise cake with Grand Marnier syrup, thin layers of chocolate ganache and raspberry mousse coated in dark chocolate ganache. It’s not surprising to discover that the bakery uses more than 48 pounds of butter during a typical week, much more during holidays and wedding cake season.
While he sells eclairs all day and takes orders for decadent wedding cakes, most of Daniel’s business is wholesale. Many folks have enjoyed his tarte au pommes even if they didn’t know where the French treats came from. Daniel’s supplies Serioz Pizzeria, Cafe Mon Ami, Cafe de France, Aspen Grove Bistro, The Bagel Deli and the Cherry Creek Country Club.
One retail trend Pasquierello has noticed is that customers now ask for smaller desserts, leading him to expand the selection of mini-tortes, small but identically made versions of the larger cakes like baba au rhum, along with a new addition: cake pops, that taste exactly like the cakes.
“People want smaller desserts. They like the variety and it allows to try more than one,” he said. He also bakes a roster of gluten-free treats and, on Saturday, he even does some French bread loaves.
“We consider our desserts to be ‘European rich’ with butter and cream and none of that nasty sweetness you get from a bucket,” he said, alluding to commercial bakeries.
Even now as he celebrates 10 years in business at 12253 E.Iliff Ave., Pasquariello still considers himself a baking novice. “Everything I know about pastry I learned from Daniel,” he said.
In fact, Daniel still lives in Aurora and stops in occasionally. “He’ll ask me what I’m doing selling tiramisu and cannoli and cupcakes,” Pasquariello said. “He would say ‘That’s not the French way.’ I tell him that it may not be the French way but it makes my customers happy.”