Behind the pastry kitchen: what you never see
The pastry section runs a separate clock from the rest of the kitchen. It starts earlier, ends later, and leaves the cleanest section.
Behind the pastry kitchen: what you never see
Pastry starts at 4am. By the time the savoury cooks arrive at nine, there are already trays of croissants cooling on the rack, a batch of Basque cheesecake set in the blast chiller, and two litres of crème anglaise resting in the bain-marie.
The work is mostly silence and temperature. A mousse that is two degrees too warm will not set correctly. A laminated dough that gets too hot loses its layers. You learn to work fast in a cold kitchen and to read the dough with your hands rather than a thermometer.
We rotate the dessert menu every cycle, always built around what is in season and what the kitchen has to hand. This cycle: a dark chocolate and cardamom mousse, a tart of early-season lychee and lemongrass cream, and the Basque — which never leaves the menu because members would riot.
The section closes by 2pm most days. The rest of the kitchen is still going. We leave it cleaner than we found it.