David Downie: Artful Parisian Pastry, Part 2: Paris Present

Published by Wednesday, June 19, 2013 Permalink 0

Parisian Artful Pastry, Part 2: Paris Present

by David Downie

The minimalism of contemporary pastry art can be spectacular. A Paris-trained American pastry chef friend of mine from New York came to dinner carrying a hatbox. She lifted the lid and everyone gasped. “It’s a pastry radiator,” I couldn’t help exclaiming. The “radiator’s” buttery pastry fins were filled with ethereal cream, shielded by dark chocolate plates and mounted on a hard nougatine U-shaped base reminiscent of Bakelite.

Classic chocolates from Jean-Paul Hévin ©Alison Harris

“Actually it’s a vertical millefeuille,” my friend explained as she heated the blade of a long knife—the only way to slice this incredible, gorgeous delicacy without destroying it.

The “radiator” turned out to be the conceptual-art brainchild of culinary designer Marc Brétillot, whose creations have often been spotted in the pastry department at the Bon Marché’s Grande Épicerie.

“Pastry is art,” Philippe Muzé, for a decade the wonder-worker at Paris’s bastion of traditionalism, Dalloyau, told me (he has since moved on and on and won many awards). “It’s poetry,” he added. “You can turn sugar, chocolate, herbs, spices and fruit into a million flavors and colors.” I hesitated before deconstructing his green Gâteau Vert, discovering a raspberry-colored biscuit, pear mousse, hot Szechwan pepper, cardamom, thyme and paprika.

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David Downie: Artful Parisian Pastry: Paris Past, Part 1

Published by Monday, June 17, 2013 Permalink 0

David Downie: Artful Parisian Pastry: Paris Past, Part 1

by David Downie

What do the glories of ancient Greece and imperial Rome, baroque Naples and pre-revolutionary “Let-them-eat-cake” France have in common with contemporary Paris?

Easy: artful pastry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toss out a euro coin nowadays and it will probably land on a Paris pâtisserie whose chef is bent on titillating customers’ taste buds while dazzling eyes and lightening wallets. White chocolate roses crown red powdered-sugar lips. Fruit still-lifes à la Caravaggio top praline plinths. Dark chocolate treasure chests enclose luscious layer cakes, and bras are not of silk but of purest chocolat.

Training in artistic Parisian pastry making is also in vogue: ever since the renowned École Grégoire-Ferrandi cooking school began partnering with mega-star Pierre Hermé, the chef Vogue has dubbed “the Picasso of pastry”, the “Haute Pâtisserie” concept has ruled Paris tastes.

“The fine arts number five,” wrote Marie-Antoine Carême in the late 18th century, “painting, sculpture, poetry, music and architecture, the principal branch of which is pastry.”

Ever the tongue-in-cheek wit, not for nothing Carême was known as “the king of chefs and the chef of kings”. His claim to pastry fame was the invention of Pièces Montées—precursors of today’s tiered wedding cakes. Remember Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot? Carême pièces were big enough to hide a man, like the cakes machine gun-toting Mafiosi burst from in gangster movies.

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The Macaron: A Dessert of Legendary Proportions

Published by Tuesday, March 20, 2012 Permalink 0

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Indian-inspired recipes

by Meeta Khurana Wolff

The macaron is a desert of legendary proportions, which easily transcends the cookie genre. Technically, it is simply a pastry, in which two shells made from ground almonds, egg whites, icing sugar and sugar encase a delicate filling flavored with a symphony of different flavors. In reality, its finesse goes far beyond that of cookies.

History of Macarons

It is believed that macarons made their way to the French court from Italy with the chefs of Catherine di Medici who married King Henry II of France in 1533. This dessert of all desserts really came into its own in 1792 when two nuns seeking asylum in Nancy during the French Revolution baked and sold macarons to support themselves and became known as the macaron sisters! At that time, the macaron was just plain pastry no flavor and no filling.

It was not until the 1900s that Ladurée‘s Pierre Desfontaines revolutionized the macaron by taking two pastry shells and filling them with ganache. Today, besides Ladurée, there is, of course, Pierre Hermé, both whom have elevated the macaron to new heights and made them celebrated.

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The 7 Lives of Bread: Pascal Auriac, master bread baker in Laguiole, a hidden corner of France

Published by Friday, May 6, 2011 Permalink 0

Dictionnaire Universel du Painpar Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

Translated from the French and adapted by Jonell Galloway

In the food world, the name Laguiole — a tiny village tucked away in the highlands of the Aveyron Aubrac region of France — is generally associated with the brilliant, one-of-a-kind, self-taught chef Michel Bras, whose restaurant here earned its third Michelin star in 1999, and is held in the highest esteem by gourmets around the world. In the world of haute cuisine, he is considered to be an exceptionally gifted chef who works like a sorcerer in his kitchen laboratory hidden in the Puech du Suquet region, turning out dishes that resemble none other, but which are quickly dished out by a long line of copycats.

So you can just imagine how the young chefs who spend time in his kitchen walk away with a lasting impression of a single man, who didn’t quite live in sync with the times. Perhaps he was a Cistercian monk in another life, using a golden ratio to secretly slip secret formulas into his culinary compositions. If you ask Michel Bras what inspired him most in his creative progress, he says: “Photography and foot racing!” One might say asceticism and contemplation.

Pascal Auriat — master bread baker in Laguiole, who once worked in Bras’ kitchens — is still under the influence of this “ascetic aesthete”. When he speaks about the years he spent at Bras, his tone rather resembles that of a religious convert who has not slipped in his ways after all these years. What he has most retained is the veritable alchemy of fermentation.

The bonds that started to germinate between restaurants and bread baking — hardly perceptible even now — are still moving in a positive direction. It’s now difficult to imagine that there really was a time in France, not so long ago, when a 3-star menu served mediocre bread, not worthy of being placed on such high tables of gastronomy. To remedy this situation, chefs such as Michel Bras, Alain Passard (L’Arpège in Paris) and Olivier Roellinger (former Maison de Bricourt in Cancale in Brittany), as well as many others, started installing small bread ovens in their kitchens and making bread in a somewhat primitive fashion.

Restaurant pastry, which has followed its own path, quite separate from grande pâtisserie, has a similar story. Although they both followed their own separate paths, they never stopped mutually nurturing and influencing each other. Will there come a day when the ovens in the laboratory-kitchens of the great gastronomic establishments will  be directly connected to bread ovens, each housing one of France’s handcrafted bread bakeries?

Another way for a chef to improve the quality of his or her bread is of course to order it from a bread baker worthy of her name. Some artisanal bread bakers, such as Jean-Luc Poujauran, have already dug a deep niche for themselves.

It was like a calling when Pascal Auriat, with a vocational training certificate in cuisine already under his belt, came to Laguiole to try to work for Bras. In 1992, Bras gave him his chance. His first job was the vegetable station, which might well be the heart of Bras’ creative “offensive”, so it was a true sign of trust on the part of Bras. After two seasons, a place opened in the team he had his heart set on: pastry and micro-bread baking. At the time, the three daily batches were “germinated” using sourdough starter made from yogurt, a recipe that Bras had perfected and that Auriat was to scrupulously replicate, while, at the same time getting acquainted with the world of pastry making, working alongside Philipe Andrieu. Andrieu later went on to Fauchon and Ladurée, where he is now Executive Pastry Chef, so Auriat didn’t learn pastry making in just any old school.

Pascal Auriat entre Michel et Sébastien Bras au Mazuc (première implantation à Laguiole)

Restaurant pastry making inevitably calls on its counterpart. Pascal Auriat felt the need to perfect his training, so he left his mentor, a daring act indeed. So off he went to work with Pierre Hermé (now dubbed by Vogue as being “the Picasso of pastry making”) at Ladurée, which had just opened on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Then a famous family of bread bakers, the Holders, bought out the noted Ladurée, started by Louis Ernest Ladurée, a former miller, in 1862.

Musical chairs: the miller Ladurée opened a pastry shop/tearoom, which was bought out over a hundred years later by a bread baker. A cook who learned to make pastry from another cook abandons the highland stoves of remote Aubrac to try his hand at small and big jobs on the Champs-Elysées. Gastronomic explorers have no bounds.

But Auriat did make his way back to Laguiole in 1999, when Bras asked him to become No. 2 pastry chef. The restaurant had just gotten its third Michelin star, and had to face up to the inundation of guests. There was no lack of work, and the horizons were unlimited. Michel and his son Sébastien were invited to open a branch in the Hokkaido Windsor hotel in Japan. Auriat packed his suitcases.

It just so happened that Eric Kayser, bread baker/fellow of the craft and today head of an empire including more than 60 bakeries spread out on all continents, also landed in the Windsor, where he opened a bread bakery. The three men met and talked about fermentation. Bras’ old yogurt only slightly interested Kayser, who advised him to use a liquid starter that he had patiently perfected. In the world of fermentation, Kayser had it all; Bras was convinced to change his ways.

When Auriat returned to his fold in the Aveyron, he started applying the “new school” methods of making sourdough bread using liquid starter. And just as every pastry chef puts his hands in the dough, his shoulder to the wheel, he left them there. He would have had to leave a starter in the refrigerator for six months, out of spite, to obtain what he was looking for, in vain, on his own: a good starter to incorporate into his tried and true kneading techniques.

Pascal set up shop on his own with Anne, whom he had met at Bras, and started perfecting his magic formulas using a starter made from wheat and rye from the Auvergne region, delivered straight from the moulins Antoine mill.

When he talks about himself, he says that the time he spent at Bras as cook, pastry chef and bread baker made him put taste above all else. One might call it bread baker’s aesthetics, expressed through taste. It could be his slogan.

It’s not often that a bread baker gets his training in the world of haute cuisine. And when it comes to Michel Bras’ kitchens, one might question whether a bread baker merits the attention of bread lovers.

Master bread baker in Laguiole, a hidden corner of France, cradle of creativity: it does sound good on a sign, doesn’t it?

Anne & Pascal Auriat
1 place Auguste Prat
12210 Laguiole
Tel : 00 33 (0) 5 65 44 31 09
Site : http://www.maison-auriat.fr/
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