Inside Job:
The Baker/Pastry Chef Story and photography by CORY KNIBUTAT
These passionate individuals bust their tails to craft their visions of delicious breads and pastries. Calgary has an embarrassment of young talent as well as seasoned professionals. From a simple sourdough loaf or fancy tarts to impress dinner guests, this city has it all. Rustic Sourdough Bakery for using a lot of organic and natural ingredients. We have no shortening. We don’t use any trans-fats.”
At the heart of 17th Avenue SW, Rustic Sourdough Bakery specializes not only in traditional artisanal sourdough breads, but pastries as well. Swiss Master Baker and Master Pastry Chef, Jos Rehli, has highly skilled bakers and pastry chefs working for him to bring his recipes to life. “I really try to develop products with a clean ingredient label,” Rehli said. “We are known
Many independent bakeries in the city stress the use of organic and nutritious ingredients to distance themselves from the chemical and preservative-laced breads found at supermarkets, knowing full well they can’t compete on price. “It’s sometimes difficult to do, but I still want to offer my customer real bread with an ingredient list that is clean,” Rehli said. “If you look at the ingredient list of the bread in some chains with preservative powders added, it’s scary.”
Some new customers aren’t quite aware of the shorter life cycle of artisanal bread and have not been around real bread for many years, but you can’t really blame them if they were raised on Wonderbread. “It’s a bit of an educational process,” Rehli said. “Once in a while we have customers bring the bread back. We explain what happened and replace the bread free of charge,” Rehli added. “Working with natural and organic ingredients is challenging because you don’t have these powders added to the breads that make it more stable, but generally, people are more and more aware of what they’re eating. You will find Rustic Sourdough Bakery at 1305, 17 Avenue SW and also at Kingsland Farmers Market www.rusticsourdoughbakery.com
Pascal’s Patisserie Tucked away in the South East is a bit of a hidden gem, Pascal’s Patisserie, which features traditional, artisanal, melt-in-yourmouth French pastries whipped up daily by, you guessed it, a gentlemen named Pascal. While the pastries that Pascal Bagioli, a pastry chef of 20 years, makes are in every sense of the word, delightful, they are designed to be taken home and finished in your own oven. In effect you, the customer, fill your house with the intoxicating smells of a French bakery that will make your Febreeze air-freshener fall out of the socket. Pastries are mixed and formed in the bakery, but immediately vacuum-sealed
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and frozen to keep them fresh for months. “With our product, we have to suspend the fermentation because you need it to last frozen for up to three months,” Bagioli said. “When you do the same thing fresh you don’t mind it because the dough needs to ferment to become stringy to keep the shape when you bake it. Ours needs to stop.” “The water needs to be a certain temperature, the butter needs to be a certain temperature, but the process shouldn’t start,” Bagioli added. “The dough shouldn’t be soft, always strong to stop the fermentation.”
The responsibility then falls on customers to finish the fermentation process at home by letting the pastries thaw, usually five to eight hours or overnight, then paying careful attention to the baking instructions that come with every product. “With this, we have a beautiful exchange with our customers,” Bagioli said. “We always ask them to send us a picture of their creations along with the baking times.” Pascal’s Patisserie is located at 101, 5240 - 1A Street SE www.pascals.ca