inthekitchen
turnovers, and a luscious apricot tart oozing with pastry cream and glistening, plump fruit. Like traditional French pâtisseries, the bakery also serves savouries, such as quiche and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches covered in velvety béchamel. A handful of café tables bathed in late day sunshine hold customers seemingly reluctant to leave their warm cocoon, as if the big cups of good, dark coffee and aniseed cookies have magically transported them to the south of France.
Part of the bakery’ s appeal comes from Nathalie, whose broad smile and charming accent are as irresistible as her pastries. She learned the fine art of customer service from her mother, at her parents’ bakery in Marseille, France. There, from the age of seven, she ran the cash register while her
Once, it took four attempts in a row to create a satisfactory choux pastry.“ You have to incorporate the flour quickly into the butter and water and dry the dough to the maximum,” she explains, adding that now she can make it in her sleep.
That’ s probably a good thing, as she and Gilles arrive at four o’ clock every morning to bake the bread that has been rising overnight in the French proofing ovens, attend to the cream fillings and prepare the flaky dough for the napoleons and croissants. Some ingredients are imported, like nongenetically modified German flour, and some are local, like the butter from Notre Dame de Lourdes.( Surprised by the extra water in Canadian butter, they had to adjust their recipes.)
“ My mother said you should do only what you are good at.”
father baked in the back. Later, she took on the accounting duties and worked in the shop every weekend until she was 18.
The budding business owner spent a year in London, UK, working as an au pair and learning English, followed by a stint in Toronto studying business management. When she returned to France, she met Gilles and persuaded him to join the family business, apprenticing with Nathalie’ s father and formally training as a pastry chef. Eventually the couple moved to a shop of their own in Avignon.
Even in a country known for its bakeries, supermarkets selling bread caused the baker’ s trade to wane. One day, a newspaper ad for opportunities in Canada sparked the discussion that would lead to a major life change. Intrigued by the potential, they made plans to sell the shop, and at the age of 40, Nathalie enrolled in the prestigious Institut National Boulangerie Pâtisserie in Rouen to obtain her pastry chef diploma.
Baking was still an industry dominated by men, and instructors were demanding.
By six o’ clock, a small crew begins the éclairs while Nathalie fills the bread racks and display cases. In the afternoon, she starts the sponge cakes, chocolate mousse, cookies and glazes while Gilles makes the bread dough and seven varieties of macarons.
When it first opened, their Winnipeg shop served 17 people a day compared to 600 in France. As word spread they were quickly embraced by customers who became ambassadors; now, sixty baguettes fly out the door every Saturday and lineups snake down the street.
She leads us to a 1973 photo of her parents standing in front of their Marseille bakery.“ My mother said you should do only what you are good at,” smiles Nathalie, who has more than accepted the challenge. Her talents as a businesswoman and baker have been magnified by her devotion to classic French baking techniques and commitment to quality, creating some of the finest pastries in the city.
What could be sweeter than that?
14 ciao! / apr / may / two thousand seventeen