At the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, New York, it’s about more than rolling the perfect croissant or preparing the best brunoise. Student Special Projects Days bring industry professionals to campus for career fairs, lecture series, and other professional development opportunities to prepare future chefs for a variety of careers in the culinary world. As a supporter of CIA’s annual Student Activities Program, Matfer Bourgeat USA teamed up with Chef Miro Uskokovic, a 2010 graduate of the CIA and Executive Pastry Chef at Gramercy Tavern, to present an afternoon demo and Q & A entitled “Operating Your Bakery in Today’s World,”
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Nearly 200 students, staff and faculty gathered as Chef Miro presents a recipe for Kabocha sticky buns, with a subtly amended flavor profile built on turmeric paste, jaggery, and date palm sugar. These additions not only offer a worldly take on a classically American bakery product, they also form an important aspect of Chef Miro’s operational response to skyrocketing prices of vanilla and butter.
With the price of butter up nearly 50 percent, averaging between $140-$190 a case in NYC, Chef Miro and the team at Gramercy Tavern have designed a Brioche formula that requires less butter while creating space to introduce new sugars. Incorporating sweeteners like muscovado, jaggery, and date palm sugar can reduce a pastry kitchen’s reliance on the pairing of white sugar with vanilla – another ingredient subject to skyrocketing costs.
In the Q and A that follows the demonstration, Chef Miro shares the opportunities he sees for baking and pastry professionals as the industry emerges from the pandemic.
“I think what professionals in bakery and pastry have realized over the last few years is that our concepts are far more resilient than we might have realized” he argues. “Restaurants require patrons to be inside your business for sometimes hours on end. Bakeries and pastry are far more flexible in terms of how you serve those customers.” That flexibility, Chef Miro suggests, is an asset for a business owner. And after the pandemic, “investors are taking notice.”
It’s a good time to be in the business, says one of NYC’s most awarded and respected pastry chefs. “I think it’s our time, now.”
