Hello readers,
This is something we’ve been looking forward to for awhile. Besides on chefs, we want to provide looks into education, behind the scenes of workdays, etc. Kelly Miura kind of took a different road to continuing her pastry education, one that I’ve found very exciting.
I usually write an intro here for any piece I do for pastrypros.com but … suffice it to say Pastry Chef Kelly Miura did such a good job I’ll let her take over — ted niceley

Hi Kelly! Welcome to PastryPros.com ! For our readers, what is your background, most notably cooking.

Thanks Ted, I’ll try to job my memory as best I can to share my
“French Adventure” with you and PastryPros readers. Pastry is my
second career; before that I was in the music business like yourself,
involved in music video production for about 10 years. During that
time however, I was also practicing pastry on the side and took
extension courses at the CIA in Napa and Hyde Park for specific areas
I wanted to work on. I began with cake decorating in 1995 and worked
on weekends at a high-end cake studio in Beverly Hills for over 3
years. In 2004 I decided it was finally time to leave the music
business to focus on pastry full time. I moved away from just doing
cakes and branched out to all desserts, and have worked at several
restaurants and bakeries, a dessert catering company, and since my
return have been freelancing as a pastry chef/consultant. I am about
to start a new adventure that entails creative control in starting my
own line of pastries at an existing bakery with high traffic so that’s
pretty exciting.

What compelled you to do the “BIG LEBOWSKI”? To take on a Pierre Herme
class AND to do the the ten week course @ French Pastry wunderkind and MOF
Olivier Bajard’s school way out in PERPIGNAN, in the south west of France? BTW,
you’re on his gallery web page with Spanish Uber pastry chef Oriol Balaguer, I believe!

I don’t know why it took me so long to finally get to France, but it
completely changed my life. In July 2005, sort of at the last minute
I tagged onto a trip with my sister and a friend to Paris; my first
trip overseas. I fell in love with everything there — the lifestyle,
the high regard and quality of food, beauty, language, people, and of
course, the pastry. I couldn’t get Paris off of my mind and knew I
wanted to go back, and soon. I fantasized about living there, even if
just temporarily to get it out of my system. Since France is the
mecca of pastry, why not live there and study? Never in my life up
until then had I ever even thought of doing such a thing, let alone
actually doing it. I started thinking about the idea seriously,
asking friends and family for feedback and doing research. I was
hesitatant, thinking how I should have done it years ago, but actually
Ted, you were a big influence in my decision to just go for it. Sure,
it would have been nice to have done it 10 years earlier, but as you
pointed out, there was no real reason why it was too late now. Only
excuses.

I did a lot of researching on schools and programs, and wanted a
shorter program (under 6 months), with teaching in English as well as
French so I could get the most out of it since my French was and still
is far from fluent. I was going more for finesse and to get
first-hand French techniques from the masters, so the bigger schools
seemed more mill-like and I wanted something more specialized. I had
met Oliver Bajard at the World Pastry Forum in Las Vegas (’04) and
remembered he mentioned he was going to be opening his own school,
“between the mountains and the sea” in the South of France. I was
originally hoping to study in or around Paris, but his program was
just what I was looking for so I decided on Perpignan instead, which
is in the middle, very bottom of France.

Then of course, since I was already going to be in France, why not
also take a quick Pierre Herme course?! I signed up for the 3-day
“Best Of” and it was just that — all of his biggest sellers and we
learned how to each of them exactly how he does it down to the
packaging and shelf-life.

Would you say the classes at both schools were expensive compared to
the US equivalents? Say, The French Pastry school, etc.?

I broke down my 5 final schools in a variety of ways, including cost,
down to per hour. They did vary somewhat, but there were no huge
extremes. I did look into FPS, and would definitely have gone there
if I wanted to stay in the US because I think it’s by far the best
school for pastry here. Cost-wise, me moving to Chicago for 6 months
and going to school at FPS would have been about the same.

How long did it take to get enrolled in the Ferrandi classes of PH?
The classes were 3 or 4 days long?

I signed up easily online and was able to pay with a credit card,
which was convenient compared to wiring or international bank drafts.
It was $1300 for the 3 days. I communicated with the school through
email and they assured me the instructor taught in both French and
English, which unfortunately was not really the case.

What desserts were you concentrating on at PH?

We had the maximum of 12 students and we split up into four groups and
were given assigned tasks, all different components of each recipe, so
it really didn’t all come together until the third day when we
assembled all the parts. We made Ispahan, 2000 Feuilles, Plaisirs
Sucres, Emotion, Victoria, Plentitude, bon bons, ice creams and more.

Was there a sense of urgency involved?

It all went very fast. We had a huge list of things to do the first
two days, along with lecture and explanation. It was pretty funny
though, no matter how busy we’d be, come lunch time we’d relax and
have a multi-course meal with wine. Gotta love being French.

Any particular equipment that stood out? Induction burners?
Stephan’s vacuum emulsifiers (for bon bons)? Pacojets? Unusual
ingredients? I saw a recipe on starchefs.com for the Isphan macaroon and he is using gellan in that. What kind of chocolates were used? I would expect Valrhona. Any
surprises with that?

We used induction burners and the Stephan but not Pacojet, the ice
cream machine was by Bravo. Sorry, I didn’t pay attention to the
ovens (deck and convection) but the convection was probably by Arpin
if that’s what he uses.

Unusual ingredients - I guess the most unique one to me was “beurre
sec,” a semi-dehydrated butter. It was waxy and very yellow. Not a
widely distributed product; I think they may have said his dairy may
make it exclusively for him. We used it in the pate feuilletee.

The chocolate was all Valrhona. We did not use gellan, perhaps that’s
something more recent he’s been experimenting with.

You seem to like macaroons (French style) a lot and make them. Any
hints on them? Did the Herme’ class make them?

Why yes, I am quite fond of them! They’re pretty, delicious and so
versatile. We did make them in the Herme course as well as at
Bajard’s. They each use different methods with the meringues (as well
as garnish, storage) and their products are very different. I
experiment with macarons a lot and they can be temperamental for sure.
For me, oven temperature has a lot to do with it and you just have to
keep tinkering until you get the right pattern down. Olivier’s advice
is that it’s very important to have a good filling — he says most
people just concentrate on the cookie and it’s the filling that makes
or breaks it.

Did you see that ice creams in France, recipes that is, used butter in
them?

We did not use butter in our recipes, but I have tried it before from
the Emmanuel Ryon book. Olivier broke down the technology of sorbets
and ice creams, to the point where you could create any recipe based
on specific calculations of ingredient percentages, as regulated by
government and studied by University of Pennsylvania. The 8% fat
could be derived from milk, cream, or butter — as long as it all
added up in the end. I’m looking at his vanilla ice cream recipe now
and it consists of milk, vanilla bean, cream (35%), Trimoline, yolks,
milk powder, atomized glucose, sugar, stabilizer, and monosterate.

Bajard’s course in general, your thoughts….

I absolutely loved the course and what it had to offer. I felt it was
much more enriching than one of the bigger schools because it was was
all-encompassing; in that I learned not just about pastry but local
art, culture, history and food. Olivier is a true genius and his
mission is to teach what he knows, he has a strong desire to share his
passion and knowledge and if you’re receptive you can get much more
out of it than just recipes and methods. He has a very technical
approach, so yes he will break down a recipe down to the smallest
molecule to figure out how and why it works, and how it then can be
adapted.

Michael Laiskonis took a 3 day course at Ewald Notters school that
Norman Love hosted Bajard and he said that one of the days Bajard
broke down a chocolate mousse, in theory, and ML thought it was one of
the most amazing things he ever partook in. Did you have some of
these moments too?

Actually, a very memorable moment wasn’t in the kitchen. At the very
beginning, when he took us on field trips around the area, we went to
the Dali museum in Figueres, Spain. He showed us his favorite
painting, which was on the ceiling and then told the story behind it.
By the time he was done, I had tears streaming down my face because it
was all so beautiful. I had never been that moved by art before; not
that it was just the painting though, it was also the story and the
way he told it. This is what I mean by what one normally doesn’t get
from going to the usual culinary schools, and it was exactly what I
was looking for.

Wow Kelly, for the moment I’m not going to sully that with more
questions.
Thanks so much for sharing your trip with us and hopefully we can
keep updated on your adventures!

Categories: Daily Mis en Place
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