Are you born a pastry-chef? I don’t know. For sure, when I was a kid and people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I didn’t appear to have any clear idea. I would say all sorts of jobs but “chef”: a mother, a soldier, a teacher, a translator… This is because when I was a child, chefs were still called cooks and working in a restaurant was by no means the dream it today represents for many people.
Since then, many years have gone by and now I do know what I want to do when I grow up: I want to be a pastry-chef! Besides, when you think about it, it’s a bit the synthesis of all the jobs I would mention in the beginning: I’m a teacher to younger people, an interpreter because many don’t speak Italian but also a bit of a soldier, because life in the kitchen is a mix of rules and rigour.
I began working at
La Credenza in San Maurizio Canavese when I was 17 and the long journey we covered together with the other guys in the kitchen has allowed me to grow a lot from a professional point of view. I’m sure the combination of pastry-making and high cuisine is an alchemy made of exchanges, techniques, visualising the dish even before it has been created. I like to think of dishes as the result of teamwork. In the kitchen, just like with pastry-making, individualism is never a good choice, because without the others you’re nobody.
The trick (or the luck, as you may prefer) is to have some good teachers, that would indicate the direction without imposing their own journey onto you. Teachers that would help you learn that this work is made of sacrifice, responsibility, rigour and discipline. And that you shouldn’t give up in the face of difficulties but stand up again and take the challenge.
That of the pastry-maker is a job full of research. I teach my interns the importance of hands-on experience and that the quality a good pastry-chef needs is curiosity. Only this can lead you to understand ingredients and the rules of pastry-making in the proper way.
Even travelling is important because, especially today, contaminations are precious influences and great chances to enrich yourself. Research, commitment and listening – this is where you need to start from. The rest is all fantasy, personal-inclination, capacity… and luck. You can’t deny it: a touch of luck, just like in all things, is always useful.
