Mortensen's Danish Bakery

Kringle, wienerbrød and butter cookies

The case is the argument: kringle, Danish pastries, almond pastries and butter cookies at the front, with cinnamon rolls, seed crackers, pancake balls, cupcakes and gluten-free bakes filling out the rest. Mortensen's Danish Bakery has worked this way in Solvang for more than 40 years, since the early 1980s, from a single shop that never became a chain. It was founded with a professional baker from Copenhagen, and that link is the point. The recipes and the technique are Danish, set down in a Danish-themed California village rather than borrowed for it. The bakery sits in Petersen Village Square among the shops, and unlike the bakery-restaurants nearby it has stayed bakery-first, with no dining room bolted on.

A bakery stop, not a sitting room

The visit is short and built around the case. Come in, read the shelves, order at the counter, then carry the bag out or take the seating nearby. Coffee or tea will go with the pastry, but neither is a program in its own right and the bakery does not pretend otherwise. What it does instead is smell right: golden pastry carries out the door, which is most of the reason people stop. In a town full of windmills and half-timbered facades, this is one of the addresses where the Danish part is the baking rather than the architecture, and it works as a local counter and a day-tripper's stop at the same time.

Start with kringle and cookies

Order kringle first, then butter cookies, then an almond pastry. Those three give the clearest read on the house and cover the range from a bake to share to something that keeps in a tin. After that, widen into the Danish names on the shelves. Wienerbrød is the pastry itself, kanelbullar the cinnamon-roll side, frøsnapper the seed-cracker baking, and ebleskiver the round Danish pancake balls, a broader spread than the shortlist suggests. Cupcakes and gluten-free bakes are there too, practical rather than traditional, and they do not change what the shop is. For a first visit, kringle and a bag of butter cookies is the order that travels best.