{"id":20527,"date":"2017-12-06T14:40:37","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T21:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=20527"},"modified":"2017-12-07T15:26:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T22:26:59","slug":"long-awaited-french-bakery-opens-in-downtown-billings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/12\/long-awaited-french-bakery-opens-in-downtown-billings\/","title":{"rendered":"Long-awaited French bakery opens in downtown Billings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Checkout\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Francois Morin, the owner of Le Fournil, checks out Alan Lohof, one of his first customers Wednesday morning.<\/p><\/div>\n

Alan Lohof, a captain with the Billings Fire Department, was in line at Le Fournil, a new French bakery in downtown Billings, about 20 minutes after it finally opened its doors Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been chomping at the bit for quite a little while,” Lohof said.<\/p>\n

\"Bakery\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

The new French bakery is located at 2805 First Ave. N.<\/p><\/div>\n

A few minutes later he was on his way, toting two baguettes and two country loaves, which he planned to share with his colleagues back at the fire station.<\/p>\n

Francois Morin, whose plans we wrote about<\/a> last January, had hoped to open his bakery last spring, but he said on Wednesday that he had to wait until July just to get a work permit, and has been busy remodeling and installing equipment since then. He said the electrical system also had to be upgraded to handle his large oven and commercial mixer.<\/p>\n

He opened for a couple of hours last Friday, during the Holiday ArtWalk and Christmas Stroll, but he didn’t even have a point-of-sale system operating yet and could only take cash.<\/p>\n

He officially opened Wednesday at 11 a.m. and planned to close at 2, bake another batch of fresh bread and open again from 4 to 6 p.m.<\/p>\n

He said those will probably be his hours for now, as he figures out the best way forward. Your best bet is to follow him on Facebook<\/a>, where he will be posting his hours and what kinds of bread are available each day.<\/p>\n

As he told another customer Wednesday morning, “It’s going to change a lot, on a daily basis.”<\/p>\n

On his first day he was offering four kinds of bread \u2014 pain au levain<\/em> (sourdough country bread), baguettes viennoises<\/em>, traditional baguettes and black baguettes.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Oven\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Fresh out of the oven.<\/p><\/div>\n

His bakery is at 2805 First Ave. N., in the Stapleton Building between\u00a0Big Dipper Ice Cream and Rockets Gourmet Wraps. He is leasing the space from Jeremiah Young,\u00a0who runs the\u00a0Kibler & Kirch design studio<\/a>\u00a0on the second floor of the Stapleton.<\/p>\n

“We got just great support from Jeremiah,” who also designed the space, Morin said.<\/p>\n

One of the first half dozen customers in the door was Paul Berger, who has been keeping on eye on Morin’s Facebook page.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been anticipating it for a couple weeks,” he said. “It’s nice to have authentic French cuisine.”<\/p>\n

Another early customer was Dan Yazak, who teaches school counseling at Montana State University. His first words upon entering the bakery and having a look around were, “Wow!” and then “wow!” again. It wasn’t clear whether he was mainly impressed with the breads or the decor, but he was definitely enthusiastic.<\/p>\n

“Thank you for coming and doing all this hard work,” he told Morin.<\/p>\n

Morin said he may expand his offerings to include things like croissants and brioches in the future, but for now he just wants to offer good French bread.<\/p>\n

He opens in a downtown that suddenly finds itself with four bakeries making European-style breads and pastries, the others being the Annex Coffeehouse and Bakery<\/a> at 2601 Minnesota Ave., Veronika’s Pastry Shop<\/a>\u00a0at 2513 Montana Ave., and Three Birds Bakery<\/a>, inside the old Log Cabin Bakery at 2401 Second Ave. N.<\/p>\n

Le Fournil<\/em>, Morin says, is French for “oven” but also for a place that sells baked goods. As for how to pronounce it, we hesitate even to attempt to render it phonetically. You’ll have to ask Morin.

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Alan Lohof, a captain with the Billings Fire Department, was in line at Le Fournil, a new French bakery in downtown Billings, about 20 minutes after it finally opened its doors Wednesday morning. “We’ve been chomping at the bit for quite a little while,” Lohof said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17,18],"tags":[5338,1433,6529,4569],"class_list":["post-20527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-billings","category-culture","category-diversions","tag-francois-morin","tag-jeremiah-young","tag-le-fournil","tag-stapleton-building","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20527"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20534,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20527\/revisions\/20534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}