LOGAN SQUARE — Chicago's favorite pastry chef has staked a spot in one of Chicago's new favorite blocks.
Mindy Segal, owner of popular Bucktown dessert bar Mindy's Hot Chocolate and 2012 winner of the James Beard award for "Outstanding Pastry Chef in the Country," announced this week that she's leased a 6,000-square-foot space in the 2300 block of North Milwaukee Ave and plans to open a bakery.
In a phone interview Friday, Segal said the bakery will be heavily influenced by French baking but rooted in her bona fides as an American pastry chef.
"I went on my honeymoon in Paris, and I saw a couple bakeries in particular that I fell in love with," she said.
Specifically, Segal said she loved their presentation, and the way they had an oven right there from which they'd pull fresh bread to put right on display.
"I kind of feel like they display their bread in a very natural kind of way," she said. "It comes right out of the oven, and it's all very fresh."
She plans to focus on a variety of breads at the bakery — which she hopes to open in summer 2014 — but said she said she in considering some other French standards such as eclairs and napoleons.
For now she knows she will carry "lots of cookies," but, sorry, no macarons.
"Just not my style," she said.
Segal's new venture will be next to The Radler, a German beer hall opening soon at 2375 N. Milwaukee Ave.
"It's a perfect location for me," she said. "It's a good thoroughfare to get me both to restaurants and get me on the road to deliver product if I decide to go wholesale."
If she does decide to sell wholesale, Segal said it will be on a small scale, though nothing has been set in stone.
"I'm just going to build a kitchen to see what I'm capable of," she said. "Hopefully I'll do some things right, and other things I hope I'll learn."
