Paccredited by the most prestigious Parisian establishments, from Fauchon to Crillon, the 58-year-old pastry chef returned to his Alsatian lands in 2012, where he opened two stores with his colleague Camille Lesecq.
“When we say “gingerbread”, we often think of a dense and thick cake. I discovered the version that I like in Austria. Grandson of a lumberjack and son of a baker, I grew up in Alsace, where it was said that the best pastry in the world was Demel, in Vienna. So, at 18, with my sister, I made the trip to check it out. It was the end of the year, there were lots of preparations for the holidays, and we tasted an amazing gingerbread: soft and so tasty!
For years, when I was stationed in Paris, at Fauchon or at Crillon, I tried to find this result, but I couldn’t do it. Dad gave me important advice: prepare the dough made from flour and honey well in advance, so that the flavors have time to develop. Every time I talked to him about it, he asked me: “But do you let the dough age for six months?” I was young, I didn’t listen much. I told myself it was no use. And then, who wants to think about gingerbread in June, when we are in the middle of strawberries and apricots?
Lots of work up front
It was really during my last years at Crillon that I followed his advice, and there I saw the difference: prepared before summer, the gingerbread had so much more flavor! When I took up baking in Alsace with Camille [Lesecq, son associé], Twelve years ago, I came across some old cookbooks in the attic. And in one of them, I found the right recipe, the one that comes closest to Vienna gingerbread.
We cannot say that it is simple. In the gingerbreads I made before, there were six or seven ingredients. There, there are thirty-five: almond paste, three different kinds of flour and yeast, several honeys, eight spices, including green anise, star anise, nutmeg, ginger, star anise… And we stuff it with compote and candied or dried fruits that we make ourselves.
It’s a lot of work up front, and then, when the dough is ready, it becomes soft and sticky, hard to handle, and dries quickly. You have to brush it with milk before cooking it, then let it rest for two weeks so that it regains moisture… It’s really a lot of work, and all done by hand. Every year, we deliver gingerbread to certain hotels, but when they suggest we think bigger and do Christmas markets, we say no. It’s too much !
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