Fred Csibi-Levin: Combining Scientific Method with the Artistry of Pastry

One of the first, let's get into some specifics here, which I think some of our listeners might find useful.

One of the first things that you tackled when you were first starting out in pastry was macaron, which are obviously notoriously tricky for people.

Why did you decide to focus on them?

Well, I like a challenge.

I'm the kind of person that really likes to understand and dissect processes.

Macaron, as you said, they're tricky, well-known.

You know, to me, I had the same mixed experience in terms of success.

One day it will work, another day it didn't.

That type of result really makes my brain go crazy.

And like, what is going on? I need to understand this.

I need to figure this out.

There's no way this is going to win.

So again, I think that scientists questioning, asking, really think a lot about it.

That's what made me really want to tackle, let's do macaron.

You know, there are many things different, you know, they're in pastries.

I know now things that can be more complex than macaron, in my opinion.

But it was a good test for me.

All right, how do I apply my critical thinking and my newly acquired science background in order to master the macaron? You know, tried so many things.

I had a notebook that I call my lab notebook, similar to what I did in my bench science past.

Write everything, go one by one of a single substitution at a time, note the results, go back.

Understood a lot.

The challenge for me was when I started to do research in terms of looking into online blogs, recipes, any source of information, including YouTube videos, people will say so many different things or will be very specific, like mix demerin for five minutes at speed two and then five more minutes at speed eight.

I don't know.

I will try to repeat these things, but it didn't work.

And I'm like, why does it work for them, not for me? So that's when I understood that it's really a technique.