We defy you to take a walk around Minneapolis’s Wedge neighborhood on a Sunday morning—especially on a sunny, cool, late-summer Sunday morning—and describe it as anything other than “bustling.” People are out walking dogs and riding bikes. They’re making their way to the co-op for groceries, or to stand in line at Isles Bun & Coffee, or they’re planning to scan the stacks at Disco Death or grab a coffee at Caffetto.
It’s a dense neighborhood with a lot of foot traffic. And, for the last few months, many of those feet have been heading to the front porch of a powder-blue house at 27th & Colfax. That’s where, since late May, cottage baker Nikhil Saxena has been selling wonderful croissants with his pop-up bakery Street Wheat.
Saxena has always been a big baker, and Street Wheat started with catering orders for events: cookies, croissants, custom cakes, pretzels. When he and his partner, Evie Weiner, bought the house on Colfax about a year ago, he thought: Why go to farmers markets when their neighborhood is already full of people?
“There’s so much foot traffic, and the community-building piece of it is very important to me—it’s really cool to be able to talk to our neighbors every Sunday morning,” Saxena says. “It just kind of occurred to me that the best thing to do would be to do it every week off the porch.”
Saxena started with about 100 croissants, available during a three-hour window each Sunday. He’d make the dough on Friday and laminate it on Saturday, waking at around 4 a.m. Sunday to begin shaping and baking the croissants.
But then people started sharing his TikToks and Instagram posts, and attention from hyperlocal media outlets like Southwest Voices helped boost awareness. Within a few weeks, Street Wheat was selling out in under an hour.
These days, Saxena bakes between 200 and 300 croissants for Sunday mornings, making one batch of dough on Thursday and another on Friday and laminating each the following day. All of the shaping, proofing, and baking still takes place on Sunday morning, which means his wakeup call has crept earlier and earlier.
“I got up at, I think, 1:30 last night, which is later than I intended to. I was supposed to get up at midnight, and that’s why things are coming out a little bit more slowly than usual,” he laughs on this early September morning, adding that he’s grateful it’s a “slow day.”
But Saxena’s definition of a slow day might look a little different than yours or mine. Even with the chilly air, there are sometimes five or six groups of people lined up on the porch and down the front steps, where a playful pup, Luna, sticks her head through the fence slats hoping for a pet. Weiner takes orders and doles out the croissants (payment is accepted via cash or Venmo) while Saxena hustles from kitchen to porch, brushing egg wash on the dough before placing each batch in the oven or checking the timer on his croissants-in-progress. Smiles abound.
“I just think this is so cool,” one woman effuses as Weiner carefully places her almond croissants into a paper bag. “Being on the porch, this is the best part about it.”
“People are really excited to buy something that’s made by their neighbor with local ingredients,” Saxena says. “And I think people are also very excited to purchase from somebody who they know shares the same beliefs as they do.”
Among the yard signs affixed to Street Wheat’s picket fence: “billionaire lives don’t matter,” “end oligarchy,” and “capitalism is exploitation.” Positioned across from a poster board scrawled with “Eat the rich, flaky croissants” is an Omar Fateh yard sign.
Saxena is frustrated by businesses that try to “ride the line, politically,” because they think it’s better for business. “You can do well by standing up for the things that matter,” he says. He and Weiner, who’s a DFL staffer, are loud and proud in their beliefs, and their neighbors have appreciated that candor.
“The other thing that kind of frustrates me about croissants is they tend to be kind of an elite pastry,” Saxena says. For example, he’s noticed some bakeries advertising that they’re importing French butter. “That just seems wasteful, to me,” he says, “when we have places like Hope Creamery, where we get our butter. Dairy is nearby! They can give you good-quality, high-fat butter, and they’re an hour away.”
For proof, look no further than the excellent croissants. Street Wheat always has chocolate ($5), almond ($5), and plain ($4) croissants, with a specialty flavor that rotates weekly, often suggested by the front porch bakery’s customers and fans. Saxena keeps a public log of these specialty creations; his personal favorite is a blueberry cheesecake variety he initially dreamt up for a customer’s baby shower, but Sunday’s special, a scallion cheddar variety, was wonderfully rich and flaky, with a crown of crispy cheddar circling its base. There are also cinnamon swirls ($3), which Saxena makes from the trimmings.
Even the encroaching cold won’t put a stop to Street Wheat’s croissant Sundays—Saxena and Weiner’s house has a wide window facing the porch, and after banging on it they’ve determined that it comes out. Their plan is to build a counter outside where folks can walk up and get their croissants. “Probably in a couple of weeks now, if it stays this chilly,” Saxena says.
Street Wheat
Hours: Sundays from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. (but expect them to sell out, possibly by 10:30 or so!)
Address: 2701 Colfax Ave. S., Minneapolis
