Eric Kayser
Kayser comes from a line of bakers in Lorraine and embodies the persona of a bread missionary and the international success story of the French baguette. With more than 60 boulangeries in France and 250 around the world (including 40 in Japan), he has exported love of the French baguette worldwide.
In 30 years, he turned his Tour de France as a companion baker into a veritable baguette world tour.
"We almost had to force baguettes into people's hands in certain countries"
"We French people have very distinct consumer tastes. Crusty bread is a very French phenomenon, but many of us aren't aware of that. In Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore etc.), the preference is for steamed loaves, and what's more, Asian people often have sensitive teeth. Baguette made their way into the region by means of sandwiches sold at lunchtime."
"A baguette like ours, that tastes just as good as ours, in all four corners of the globe—that's our aim."
"The quality of the flour used no doubt plays a role. I try to find it in the local area or bring it in from the closest location possible. In the US or Canada, for example, where the wheat crop is weaker (lower in gluten), bread can collapse easily. We account for that with longer fermentation, unlike in industrial bread production, where gluten is added.
"Our international differences remain a key part of our bakers' training wherever they are."
"Even those coming from a bread culture (Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia, Belgium, etc.) and who already have good techniques, enter our training program. They come to France to train at our bakeries for six months, or train under our traveling bakers on site. And then there's a continuous training program on our YouTube channel, which is popular even with our own bakers.
In which countries can you find the best baguettes outside France? "When it comes to our baguettes, as I said, we work hard to ensure they're made to a high standard everywhere in the world, but there are still some differences. As for the 'French taste,' I've sampled the best in Japan, Senegal, and Israel, a country in which we've recently opened our first store. »
A baguette for every budget at Kayser "I should remind you that our traditional baguettes are artisanal creations and will never be able to compete with industrially made baguettes in terms of price, no matter the continent. But at our bakeries, the price varies depending on the base ingredients, resources, establishment and labor, which depend on the country. Roughly speaking, it goes from €1.20 in France to $3.50 in the USA."
Other bakers are also conquering the world:
PARÉMI, the French pastry shop in Vienna
The business name comes from its founders, Patricia and Rémi, and the address in central Vienna is easy to remember—the bakery is located on Bäckerstrasse, which means Baker Street. Although the croissant is a Viennese invention, these young French bakers are known for the quality of their own croissants, which is probably due to the quality of their layers of buttery pastry. Roughly speaking, it goes from €1.20 in France to $3.50 in the USA."
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Boulangerie Mayer, a taste of tradition in Barcelona
Trained in bread and pastry making at the prestigious École Ferrandi, and after managing a large Parisian bakery, Eran Mayer moved to Barcelona. He soon found his way into the hearts of the Catalan capital's French population, before stealing the hearts of the locals. His secret? Only using the best French (Viron à Chartres flour, which was one of the precursors of traditional French flour, and French butter) and local (Marcona almonds of the highest quality and Catalan olive oil, for example) produce.
Piekarnia Aromat, French bread in Poland
Historically, French pastries owe a lot to Poland thanks to Stanislas Leszczynski, the legendary king of Poland who was Duke of Lorraine and the stepfather of French King Louis XV. This debt has since been repaid in bread by Matthieu, who studied at the prestigious Essec business school in Paris, and his mother, who trained as a baker before returning to Warsaw in Poland, her country of origin. And Polish people love bread.
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La Fournette, French bread in Chicago
Pierre Zimmermann is a native of the Alsace region of France. In 2009, he decided to live out his American dream and sold his family boulangerie in Bas-Rhin to open up shop in Chicago. After having taught there at the French Pastry School and won the Coupe du Monde de Boulangerie (World Bakery Cup) in Paris in 1996, he became one of the most revered bakers in the Midwest thanks to the quality of his bread and his training, which he shares with the general public.
Égalité: the fraternity of French bread in Milan
Thierry Loy, a well-known baker in the Grande-Motte in southern France, but who is originally from Brittany, never imagined that the Italians would love bread and butter quite so much. Because in northern Italy, butter shares the limelight with olive oil from the south. Since 2017, with his boulangerie-cafeteria-bistro, he has become known as one of the masters of the breadmaking craft in Milan, the capital of the Lombardy region.
Mei Narusawa, from Tokyo to Paris At 14 years old, while her classmates were more into manga comics, Mei Narusawa from Yokohama (a major port town south of the bay of Tokyo) literally fell in love with French baking. I went into a French boulangerie in Tokyo, and when I smelled the croissants being baked, I knew right away that this would be my career … to the astonishment of my parents, who hadn't even tried French bread. Trained and then employed in Japan by French bakers, she then moved to France where her technical prowess turned many heads—in 2017, she won the prestigious Concours National de la Meilleure Baguette de Tradition Française (The National Best Traditional French Baguette Competition). At just over 30 years of age, Mei now plans to start her own business in France.
Vincent Ferniot
