When it came to my baking mentor and friend, Thierry’s formulas were often difficult to execute. But they have always proved well worth the challenge. My image of him in the kitchen is of a man tinkering and changing numbers on huge boards marked up with “sticky notes” packed with bread algebra.

Another baker once described Thierry as someone who “spent nearly ten minutes explaining a single gesture to me… that it took two months to understand” It’s an accurate picture of learning from this master. Working with him was a fantastic journey.  His “Frenglish” was funny, and his bread terminology was a wildly imaginative messy mix. We both dreamed in dough.

Recently I tinkered with some versions of a burger bun recipe. The results were “meh!” And so I returned to a Thierry version. Kaboom, the results were… well, let’s just use one of his expressions, “the eagle has landed!”