Had the French authored the Lord’s Prayer, it might have gone a little something like this:

“Give us this day our daily croissant.”

And who could blame them? Done right, the buttery, flaky goodness of a croissant is downright heavenly.

Still not convinced? Baker’s Cafe in Blue Hill might just make you a believer. There, Jonathan Bagley, 32, and Heather Rowe, 33, serve up pastry that’s just divine. Homemade soups and boiled bagels, espresso drinks, panini and cold sandwiches round out the mix. The only thing they don’t make is the bread, which comes from Borealis Bread.

“We love good food, and some of the things we wanted to be doing we didn’t really see anywhere else,” Rowe explained on a recent morning, over a cappuccino and one of those tender-crisp croissants.

The couple met at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor – Bagley hails from Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, Rowe from central New York state. He was a visiting student on campus during Rowe’s first year, and she remembers a cocky guy from New York sitting down in front of her.

“He knew everything,” she said, laughing.

“I still do,” he replied with a sly smile.

“We decided we both had a passion for food, and that’s what led us to this point,” Rowe explained.

After graduation, in 1997, Bagley taught himself how to bake and began selling his pastries to Bar Harbor bed and breakfasts, as well as patrons at the Ellsworth and Bar Harbor farmers markets.

When the couple and their 5-year-old son moved to Sedgwick, Bagley split his time between wholesale baking – their new house had a commercial kitchen on the premises – and independent contracting. Rowe worked at the Blue Hill Library. The setup worked well for a while, but soon, the couple decided something needed to change.

“We said, ‘We’re either going to do this for real or we should give it up,'” Bagley said. “We should do something grand and see if it’s going to work out as a business.”

After five years at the library, Rowe knew just about all of the 2,000 people on the Blue Hill Peninsula. And, as regulars will attest, Bagley makes a mean pastry. So they developed a business plan, did a little field research in New York cafes, and in January 2006, rented a storefront on Main Street.

They envisioned a cafe where all of the pastries, soups and sandwiches were made in-house. A place where someone could curl up with his laptop and sip a steaming, expertly prepared espresso drink. A place they’d like to hang out.

At the same time, Chuck Lawrence, who owns Tradewinds Marketplace, had started renovating space for a cafe adjacent to the grocery store. When he heard about the couple’s plan, he gave them a call.

“We thought one of two things: Either we need to cooperate somehow or do something completely different,” Bagley said. “We didn’t think this town could support two almost identical establishments.”

The rest, as they say, is history. In May 2006, Baker’s Cafe opened its doors, and it has slowly but steadily earned a following among tourists and locals.

One of those locals, Larry McKenna of Deer Isle, has made it a ritual to stop into Baker’s Cafe before he shops for groceries. On a recent morning, he read The Boston Globe at one of the tall, glass-topped tables near the window.

“A newspaper, a good cup of coffee, a nice seat by the window with sunlight flooding in, and it’s a wonderful place just to relax,” he said.

McKenna, 69, nibbled on “some sort of raisin thing” and sipped a latte. He had his heart set on a sticky bun, but Bagley burned the whole batch that morning. This left McKenna feeling a little less guilty about his treat.

“I like to couple a delicious treat with my requirement of it being healthy, so if it’s got raisins in it, it’s a good excuse,” he said with a chuckle. “But the sticky buns he makes are fantastic. It’s hard to rationalize the health benefit except to say they’re a modest size.”

Since everything is made fresh daily, there’s the occasional burnt batch – a tragedy, to hear the regulars tell it. Bagley rises at 2:30 most mornings to bake for the cafe, and the offerings vary daily – miniature chocolate cakes, cheese Danishes and scones filled the glass case recently. And then there are the bagels – if you close your eyes and bite into one, you’d swear you were in Brooklyn.

Though the couple started the cafe as an outlet for their baked goods, an espresso bar was an integral part of their original plan. They spent months searching for a supplier of organic, fairly traded coffee, and they found one in their own backyard: Benbow’s of Bar Harbor.

“We were hoping for something that would be a little more special,” Bagley said. “We also wanted a coffee that was going to have a little ethic behind it.”

For Chris Hurley, a carpenter and longtime organic farmer, the coffee is only part of the appeal.

“I come here five days a week when I’m working, sometimes six, sometimes seven,” he said as he polished off a steaming bowl of haddock chowder.

When asked what keeps him coming back, Hurley’s reply was multifaceted: “Good food, good atmosphere, good people running it, friends, great coffee. … We see the same people in here every day, and sometimes heated discussions develop, but that’s what a coffee shop is all about, isn’t it?”

Well, that and a Sunday brunch of cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce. Or a caramelized red onion, roasted red pepper and mozzarella panini that drips with melted cheese when you take a bite. And don’t forget the daily croissant.

“It’s really a labor of love,” Bagley said. “I know that’s a cliche thing to say, but why else would I get up at 2:30 in the morning every day?”

Baker’s Cafe is located in the Tradewinds Marketplace in Blue Hill. For information, call 374-5018.