[Mezzaluna]

I'm an experienced home cook who's gotten into baking only in the past couple of years. Your butter sugar flour eggs has given me a number treats to try, including Giant's Thumbprint Butter Cookies, Cathy's Lemon Buttercups, and Brown Sugar Shortbread. I've learned a lot about basic methods like creaming and cutting in.

Who were/are your baking mentors? When did you know you were hooked on pastry?

Thank you,
Mezzaluna

[Gale Gand]

My mom and grandma Elsie. I am mostly self taught or as Julia Child told me to say "I learned in the field".


I didn't know I wanted to do pastry until a chef I was working for (Gereg Broman in Rochester New York) forced me into the pastry department years ago (well if you call just me doing pastry a "department".). Originally I didn't want work in the pastry area because I felt that often women get type cast as either Pastry chefs or Garde Mange. At the time the chef was not happy with his current pastry chef and wanted to get rid of him. He asked me if I would step in for six months and said if I didn't like it I could leave and go to another part of the kitchen. I am a tough girl in some respects and enjoyed the competition of the hot line and the savory kitchen working along side the guys. So, at the time I was not interested in the pastry department at all. But I seem to have knack for it, having been a jeweler and diamond setter, and I loved the physics and chemistry involved.

Years later I had dinner with that chef and he asked me if I was ready to get out of the pastry department yet. I said, "Not quite yet...it seems to be working for me. But I'll let you know when I'm ready."

[LuvPie]

Originally Posted by Gale Gand

My mom and grandma. I am mostly self taught or as Julia Child told me to say I learned in the field.

I so wanted to one day meet Julia Child. When she passed I felt deflated.
I loved the show, her show, with you on it.
What a great day that must have been.

Lover of all kinds of pies.......