What Le Perche Bakery & Bar is known for

Set in a former bank dating to 1830, this Hudson, NY bakery bakes bread in a 17-ton wood-fired oven shipped brick by brick from France's Le Perche region, for which it's named. Owners Jeff and Nina Gimmel run it as a daytime café serving French baguettes, croissants and pastries.

Le Perche occupies a building in Hudson, New York that dates to 1830 and once operated as a bank, a history the bakery's French-inspired menu doesn't reference but the architecture still shows. It's owned by Jeff and Nina Gimmel, who also run the nearby restaurant Swoon, and is named for the Le Perche region of France.

The bakery's defining feature is its oven: a 17-ton circular wood-fired oven transported brick by brick from the Le Perche region and rebuilt on site. French baguettes, organic sourdough breads, croissants and pastries all come out of that oven, baked in a two-story carriage house that looks out over a covered garden and courtyard. The choice to import a French oven wholesale, rather than build a domestic equivalent, reflects how central that piece of equipment is to what the bakery makes.

By day the space runs as a café serving breakfast, brunch and lunch with reservations available through Resy; it also does wholesale, private events and gift cards. The Times Union has called it a place with "superb baked goods," a description that points back to the oven the whole building was arranged around.