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 Six month after being accepted into the prestigious program
Holding, 55, set off for France.
The 100 recipes in her first book, “The Little French Bakery
Cookbook: Sweet and Savory Recipes and Tales from a Pastry Chef
and her Cooking School,” are punctuated with survival tips for
first-time visitors to the City of Light.
“It was sort of a surprise to me that this adventure turned into
a major career change,” said Holding, who after establishing her
cooking school in North Freedom, Wisconsin, took up food
photography so she could photograph the recipes in her book
herself.
Q: Why did you write this book?
A: They are all recipes that I’ve taught over the last 15
years that I’ve had the cooking school.
Q: How did you come to apply to Le Cordon Bleu?
A: In 1998 I was a nurse working for a software company.
I wanted to take a fun weekend workshop so I circled ads in
Gourmet Magazine, which was still around then, for places like
Vermont and New Hampshire. One day this beautiful application
package from Le Cordon Bleu arrived.
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I put it aside but it just kept bugging me so I looked through it
and discovered a three-week intensive course. I volunteered at a
local bakery for the required commercial kitchen experience, wrote
the essay, applied and was accepted.
Q: How did the Little French Bakery Cooking School come
about?
A: Across from my house I have what was once a four-car
garage that I turned into a commercial kitchen, where I do all the
baking.
Q: What’s always in your pantry?
A: I always have butter: lots and lots of the best butter you
can find, and eggs and there’s always some heavy cream, nuts and
almond powder. What’s unique to me, I guess, is that I always have
cans of pears because there’s a beautiful almond pear tart that I
love to make.
Q: What’s your tip to budding bakers?
A: Find the best equipment that you can afford. Get a good
whisk, some good pans, some really good ingredients, and just keep
trying.
(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Andrew Hay)
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