Flour & Co. Serves Delicious American Pastries

Emily Day says that as director of operations at La Boulange for six years, she kept coming up with ideas that were "too American" for the French bakery.

So she saved them for her sunny Nob Hill café, Flour & Co., which opened last month. Now she's baking English-muffin breakfast sandwiches ($5), pretzels ($3) and mini potpies ($4.50).

Our favorite lunch there, however, involved biscuits and cookies. (That's two courses, right?)

Pockets of cheese in Day's savory bacon, cheddar and chive biscuit ($3.50) emphasized the tenderness at the center of the crumbly pastry, while the triple-ginger biscuit ($3.50) secreted chunks of candied rhizome amid its buttery flakes and folds. For dessert: an oatmeal praline cookie ($3), thick and crisp-edged, with a caramel-tinged richness.

Those of you who believe, like us, that baked goods taste best within a few hours of baking can take the meal home: Shop the café's freezer case, which is stocked with biscuits ($15 for 6) and tubes of the oatmeal-cookie dough ($10 for 10 cookies' worth).

It's up to you to make sure the dough makes it into the oven.