Best pastry chef or baker
WINNERS: Calum Franklin of holborn dining room, london, and Sarah Lemanski of noisette bakery, yorkshire
Calum Franklin of the Holborn Dining Room in London took an unconventional route into pastry stardom. He didn’t train as a pastry chef but was inspired to learn the craft as an executive chef because, as he puts it, “I don’t like having gaps in my knowledge”. His passion for reviving traditional pastry skills was ignited by finding an old pâté en croûte pie crust mould in the cellars of the restaurant. “None of us knew what that mould was but now I’ve had the opportunity to train 35 chefs in these old-school techniques. I am on a mission to pass on these skills to the next generation.” The proof, of course, is in the eating, and everything our judge tasted was “outstanding”, from a dry-aged Cornish duck and pork pâté en croûte with pistachios and plum chutney to a vegetarian potato pithivier with aged comté and caramelised onion. And then there were the desserts, including a classic tarte tatin that Calum spent three months trying to perfect, and a paris-brest so good our judge claimed they were even better than those they had eaten in France over the summer. A purist but also an innovator who is now developing new types of pastry, Calum is the real deal – talented, relentlessly curious and utterly obsessed with the technicalities and details of pastry.
Founded by our second winner Sarah Lemanski in 2013, and now co-run with sister Hannah, Noisette Bakehouse calls itself a “curious micro bakery” and started life working from a converted 1978 Citroën HY van at pop-ups and events. It’s now a full-time bakery with a separate café in the dockland area of Leeds, a space it shares with North Star coffee roasters. The daughter of a Yorkshire village butcher, Sarah is self-taught and was a trained nutritionist before turning to baking. She takes a “holistic” approach to running a bakery café in that she will only sell items she has baked herself and never buys products in – that’s why, uniquely, and some might say bravely, she doesn’t sell croissants despite customers asking for them.
Sarah’s passionate and knowledgeable approach to baking is formidable and her background in nutrition means she has an in-depth understanding of the science behind it all. She likes to play with unusual ingredients like miso and kefir, and is inspired by baking across the globe, from Japan to eastern Europe. Sarah’s signature streuseltopped morning cake was inspired by American ‘coffee cakes’ and it’s layered with a white soured-cream-enriched batter, tonka beans and topped with almond streusel crumb and a dusting of cocoa powder. But it was the savoury bakes our judge tasted that really showed Sarah’s strengths – a galette with swiss chard, leeks, caraway seeds, rosemary and labneh was as memorable as the four-cheese and rye scone: a blend of stoneground wholemeal and rye flours, black pepper and cayenne with cheddar, red leicester, parmesan and cream cheese.
“We couldn’t decide between these two incredible chefs because they excel in very different ways. Calum has revived the art of pie-making in this country with his obsessive eye for detail and craft, and shared his knowledge with chefs across the globe, while Sarah has determinedly innovated in the world of pastries, and punches way above her weight as an independent baker.”
Head judge Laura Rowe says: