Midway to Mardi Gras, the slow time for NOLA bakeries is a great time for football food

The croissant had the delicate, buttery-brittle crinkle to its gleaming surface that transmitted goodness by sight, sound and taste. It was the same croissant I always get at Hi-Do Bakery (439 Terry Parkway), a Vietnamese family bakery in Terrytown that’s a master of French pastries and draws throngs for its old-school king cakes.

What was different this time? On a recent Saturday morning, the bakery was dead quiet, and it’s been largely the same at bakeries I’ve been visiting around town.

Summer is the slow time in the seasonally susceptible New Orleans bakery business. It’s slow all across the local food and drink realm, of course, and this year has taken an especially hard toll.

At bakeries, the lull shows a dramatic flipside from Carnival season, when many bakers can barely keep up, thanks to the craze that is king cake.

Fat Tuesday is now six months away. Carnival, the kickoff to all sanctioned king cake consumption, begins in four months. It’s coming, but that’s a long stretch to get there.

Carnival is a defining factor in the local bakery business, and king cake demand has in large measure underwritten the revival of the neighborhood bakery around the area. I love having more small, distinctive, neighborhood-based purveyors of artisan bread, fine pastries, savory treats and desserts around. I want to see them thrive.

That brings up the next season on the calendar: football.

A trip to your favorite bakery now gives a double bottom line: supporting a local spot when it’s needed most and upping your own game day food plans.

Early kickoff, breakfasty treats

Whatever else a game day might bring, it can be the framework for friends to gather, and, naturally, eat.

When it comes to the Saints, you can tell the NFL does not like our chances of being world-beaters this season by the schedule. At least 11 games have noon starts (with one to be determined). Breakfasty, brunch-like food from the bakery seems to land right for the early starts, or maybe the even earlier pre-gaming. One should not attempt to prepare a cauldron of halftime jambalaya on an empty stomach, after all.

The dirty truth around New Orleans is that many bakeries keep king cake in year-round production, sometimes calling it by different names. I’m not listing which, because as much as I want to encourage support for local bakeries I don’t want to encourage the offseason corruption of the king cake tradition.

In any case, our local bakeries are filled with many other epicurean delights that are good for entertaining on game day or bringing something along to the party.

Football food foraging

Think of the response when you open a box of pastries to start the pre-gaming or set up a bagel platter to get the gang to halftime.

Maybe you’re making your own sandwiches for the day on the fine baguettes from Gracious Bakery (4930 Prytania St., and 2854 St. Charles Ave.) or Bellegarde Bakery (8300 Apple St.), the country loaf (or weekend black bread) from Levee Baking Co. (3138 Magazine St.) or those semolina loaves or fabulous focaccia sheets from Leo’s Bread (2438 Bell St.).

At Carnival time, I’m coming to Maurice French Pastries in Metairie (3501 Hessmer Ave.) for its regal, strawberry and cream-filled Ponchatoula king cake.

But ahead of game day, maybe it’s a box of the decorative little fruit tarts or a “Who Dat kugelhopf,” a traditional German ring cake here coated with chocolate and decorated with black and gold bling.

At Adrian’s Bakery (4710 Paris Ave.) in Gentilly, the plain king cake typically rules the Carnival time range of cakes. But it’s always that fleur de lis-shaped pound cake, utterly encased in buttery praline icing, that does it for me.

In Carnival season, Bywater Bakery (3624 Dauphine St.) is a bustling font of king cake; off-season, it’s a neighborhood cafe for pastry, chicken potpie and yakamein that’s been fused to a boutique cake shop (of the nonking cake variety).

That includes a line of delectable petit fours, bite-sized cakes all on their own, beautifully decorated with a particularly delicious, sprinkle-topped, fudgy chocolate variety.

Savory saviors

There are bakeries today that came into being on the popularity of their king cakes. Nolita (3201 Orleans Ave.) in Faubourg St. John is one example, which this year opened a full-fledged café. It shows how savory pastries can make perfect game day noshes. Try the tasso croissant, a cylinder of swirling soft dough with smoky ham tucked inside.

Now picture a cinnamon roll sitting along a buffet-style pastry case next to rolls of the same shape and size, but these filled with ham and cheese bursting through the creases in melted golden rivulets.

These are the ham and cheese rolls at Mae’s Bakeshop (3917 Baronne St.), also in its first year open. There’s also a version topped with béchamel for a croque monsieur roll to start your game day.

Ayu Bakehouse (801 Frenchmen St.) has drawn a lot of attention for its king cakes. Lesser known, but outrageously good, are the morning savories like the “boudin boy,” a handheld Cajun breakfast of boudin and boiled egg in pastry, and the long, twisty muffuletta breadsticks.

Like Hi-Do and the much larger Dong Phuong Bakery ( 14207 Chef Menteur Highway), Vietnamese bakeries have made their own niche in the king cake realm, and also as outstanding year-round bakeshops with their distinctive French and Southeast Asian blend.

A newer addition, Dough Nguyener’s (433 Lafayette St.) in Gretna, has a range of traditional pastry (try the pate chaud meat pies) and not-so-traditional treats (Vietnamese coffee doughnuts).

Some bakeries are closed on Sunday, which just means a little planning ahead to forage and procure for Saints game day. But certainly competitive king cake acquisition has trained us for that, right?