There is nothing better in the world than starting the day with a trip to a good bakery. The aroma hits you when you first walk through the door, stirring a craving that feels so natural and elementary to the basic desire for nourishment. You may feel, in the moment, that if all you had to eat for the rest of your life was fresh bread and pastries, you would be satisfied. Joanne Chang, the head pastry chef and owner of Flour Bakery + Café, would probably share my sentiments: One year after graduating from Harvard, she realized that she needed to be around food and left her job as a management consultant to join the restaurant world. She ended up becoming the pastry chef for several high-end restaurants in Boston and New York before starting her own bakery in Boston's South End in 2000.

In the last three years, she has significantly expanded, opening another Flour in the Fort Point/Waterfront area and a Chinese restaurant, Myers + Chang (named for herself and her husband and business partner, Christopher Myers) right down the street from the original Flour in the South End. This summer, a third Flour opened in Cambridge, a few blocks south of Central Square.

Whenever I've visited any of these locations, they have always been packed, and Chang's signature pastry, the sticky bun, has almost always been sold out. If you watch the Food Network, you may have seen this sticky bun before when it was put up to one of the ultimate challenges on food Television: a "throwdown" in which the Food Network star chef Bobby Flay challenges other chefs to a surprise cook-off or bake-off with their signature dishes in front of a crowd and panel of judges. A crowd of Harvard students convened at the Fort Point location for the event to cheer Chang on as the two "battled." After a round of sampling by the audience and judges, Chang was declared the winner. This did not come as a surprise; after having had a few of her sticky buns myself, I know that these are by far the best that I've ever had.

A sticky bun is simply a cinnamon roll with a layer of light caramel (or "goo," as Chang calls hers) on top, with origins likely in the first Dutch settlements in Pennsylvania. They are made by spreading the bottom of a baking pan with the caramel and other toppings, most commonly raisins and chopped pecans, and then placing the individual cinnamon rolls on top and leaving them to rise. After they have doubled in size, the buns are ready to be baked, and they stay in the oven until the caramel has turned a deep, amber brown. When the buns are done cooking, the pan is flipped upside-down so that the buns come out right-side up, with the caramel on top.

One of the most common problems with sticky buns is that the caramel is over or under-baked. When baked for too long, the caramel gets hard and requires a steak knife to cut through it, or extreme tenacity and durable teeth. When underdone, a deep caramel flavor fails to develop. The buns at Flour seem to always be spot on, with a deep, satisfying caramel of perfect consistency; they are very soft, gooey and easy to bite into. The recipe can be found online: the secret to the "goo" is a blend of brown sugar, honey, cream, water, salt and plenty of butter.

The other pastries at Flour can be hit or miss. The few misses include the chocolate chip cookie, which was dull and flat in flavor, and the maple oat scone, which was dry and lacked a meaningful amount of oats and maple icing. But the oatmeal raisin, the cornmeal lime cookies and the oreo cookies are a must, as are the chocolate cupcakes: puffy, dense and chocolatey topped with the perfect crunch, served with and fresh buttercream swirled high.

But the next-best thing at Flour, aside from the sticky buns, is the filled doughnuts. Special only on Sundays, they are everything doughnuts are meant to be. They are creative in concept, like the heavenly banana cream pie, or classic, like the vanilla cream and raspberry jam, my favorites. Freshly fried donuts made with good-quality dough, glazed and filled with fresh jam-there is nothing better.

Except, of course, for knowing how to make these and Flour's other treats. Flour has its first cookbook coming out in several weeks, and in the course of writing this review, I have ordered a copy for myself.

Visit Flour at flourbakery.com to find any of the three locations, and follow Chang on Twitter at @jbchang.