The Art of French Pastry

mom cheerfully churned through one order after another, her cash register a pad of paper on which she quickly ...

would be easy; what could be so difficult about grabbing a loaf of bread and giving it to a customer? ...

up their orders (luckily, I was good at math). By the end of that morning I was so stressed that I be ...

daily life.” After school, on weekends, and during school vacations my two sisters, my brother, and I were o ...

eventually my parents would find us. My father was very strict, and there was always something that needed to be ...

and cooked them in butter for the savory, thin-crusted tartes à l’oignon d’Alsace that my dad made once a w ...

season there were hundreds upon hundreds of Christmas cookies to make and the entire family worked together, ...

session and if my father’s assistant didn’t show up, my dad would wake me in the night to assist him in scali ...

to deal with this sticky dough while watching my father shape all of the loaves quickly and efficiently. B ...

age, and after school if I wasn’t playing soccer or participating in some contest my brother and sisters and I ha ...

creations out of dough while my father slept. I would bake them in the brick oven, which would still be ...

shapes. I’d do it at the table every night. As I got older and watched my father’s business grow I began to ...

the same time I knew that he secretly hoped I would someday take over his bakery. But I wanted to d ...

pâtissier—a baker, not a pastry chef—he made his share of éclairs, mille- feuilles, cookies, and cakes. Alsace ...

would be very busy in his bakeshop. He could make an excellent sponge cake filled with delicious chocolat ...

orders at once because it was the tradition in Alsace that when somebody married off his daughter or son the pa ...

cakes into three layers, sprinkling them with syrup spiked with kirschwasser, and filling them with butter ...

busy periods, and by then I could also do the decorating. Piping countless cakes for my dad is how I per ...

father’s cakes was an arduous one. I apprenticed with a master pastry chef named Jean Clauss in Strasbour ...

of fifteen. You will read some of my stories about those difficult days in the pages that follow. I w ...