These 8 bakers are leaving a legacy behind with the breads they create. We take a bite. By Payal Das
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Éric Kayser
French baker, Eric Kayser, has been in the business for 35 years now. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all traditional bakers and he joined them almost instinctively when he turned 19. He now owns over 80 bakeries in the world including ones in Paris, Greece, Japan, the UK, and Singapore. The chef’s breads are known to adapt to tastes and flavours depending on the region it is based in. In 2014, Eric Kayser wrote his fourth book The Larousse Book of Bread: 80 Recipes to Make at Home, adding another milestone to his illustrious career.
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Peter Reinhart
Peter Reinhart is an American baker and most famous for authoring Bread Revolution, American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza, The Joy of Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free and The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. His pizza breads are world renowned and known to have a magically soft base. He is currently a full-time Chef on Assignment at Johnson & Wales University.
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Wu Pao-Chun
A Taiwanese baker, Pao-Chun, at 47 has quite a few achievements under his belt. In 2010, he won the Master Baker title in the bread category at the Bakery Masters competition in Paris. The chef has a famous bread to his credit, known as rose-lychee, which consists of Taiwanese ingredients such as millet wine, rose petals, and dried lychees. His bread sells at a delinquently high price in the market and are available at Wu Pao Chun Bakery.
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Richard Bertinet
Richard Bertinet is a Breton baker who is known to make exceptional breads and pastries. His bakery, known as Bertinet bakery, started in 2007 with the sole purpose of selling different kinds of breads. Soon, he became the go-to baker for the variety he offered, leading him to launch a full production bakery. He is not only a renowned baker but also a teacher at his own baking school, The Bertinet Kitchen, and author of five successful books on cookery and baking.
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Bedros Kabranian
Bedros Kabranian is the head baker at Magnus Johansson Bageri & Konditori in Stockholm and a member of the Swedish National Baking team. He is popular in the baking circuit because of the variety of breads he makes and also for the shapes he gives them. You need to just request for personalisation and he gladly obliges.
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Chad Robertson
A San Francisco baking star, Chad Robertson is quite the magician when it comes to breads. He whips up more than 240 fresh loaves every day for his customers at Tartine Bakery and Café and cements his position as America’s most influential baker with the way he makes his dough. As opposed to other bakers using non-industrial equipment, Robertson adds a high percentage of water (90% hydration) to his flour. So, for every kilogram of flour, he will add 750 ml of water. This is much more than what home bakers can handle. It makes the dough super soft, and bread extremely fluffy.
7. Apollonia Poilâne
Apollonia Poilâne, daughter of famous French baker, Lionel Poilâne, is a third-generation baker who has taken over the family bakery business and now helps carry forward the legacy of Poilâne, the finest bakery in Paris. Apollonia was literally born on a bread basket (well, her crib was made from one) and knows breads like the back of her hand. Her breads have no preservatives or additives and are baked over wood fire, which is why they are so famous and get FedExed from Paris to New York for upwards of $25 per loaf!
8. Gabriele Bonci
Gabriele Bonci is a celebrity baker who is often hailed as the best Roman pizzaiolo in the world. The ‘The Michelangelo of Pizza,’ as he is also referred as, fell in love with pizzas at a very young age and in 2003, launched his first pizzeria, Pizzarium, an instant success story. Rome’s most revered pizza al taglio joint (taglio: pizza in rectangular slices) serves extraordinary pizza breads in rectangular or oblong slabs that are cut into quadrilateral slices and sold by weight and not by the slice.
