Pastry Chef Fetishes

A brief sidenote about something I have noticed: without exception, all the pastry chefs and committed pastry cooks I’ve met ("committed" in the sense that it’s their passion, not the people just doing it as a job) have three fetishes: Sharpies, thermometers and containers.

Ask a pastry chef for something to label a container of creme anglaise with and you’ll likely be presented with a range of colors, tip widths and styles (retractable or old school cap? Full-size or mini?) of Sharpie markers, always the brand name, too, never some generic rip-off. Every pastry chef and committed pastry cook (PC/CPC for short) I know carries at least one Sharpie in his or her sleeve pocket, and has a stash in his or her kit.

PC/CPCs are also like a kitten with twine when presented with a thermometer, specifically the point and shoot laser thermometers. Everyone from the fantastically talented master bakers I’ve worked with in the bakery to my French Chef of a Thousand Moods will pick up the thermometer and, while waiting for the sugar to cook or the chocolate to temper, will start methodically registering the temperature of everything within the laser’s range: the chocolate, the marble counter, the can of pineapple nearby, his arm, my forehead, the ceiling tiles and so forth.

Containers are another lure. This includes anything that could be a container, such as packaging or even PVC pipes. PC/CPCs collect them, nay, hoard them, planning for some future use. The executive chef of the bakery at the hotel, for example, watched a few of us unpack pre-molded truffle shells, came over and, there’s no other word for it, caressed the little cheap, thin plastic cases they’d been shipped in, then told us to set them aside for him. They’re like sharks, always hunting for something that can be used to mold chocolate or shape a tuille.

I say this having a kitchen full of Potential Containers That Might Be Useful, all sorted into plastic baskets that are, yes, labeled with Sharpies.

I don’t have the point and shoot thermometer. Yet.