Charming book follows writer’s passion, taste buds

By: Reviewed by Julie Kentner Posted: 1:00 AM CST Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009

Butter Cream

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This article was published 18/01/2009 (6453 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Butter Cream

A Year in a Montreal Pastry School

By Denise Roig

Signature Editions, 251 pages, $19

WITH TV channels devoted to food and the cult of celebrity chefs, gourmet cooking is fast becoming the latest obsession of millions. One such “foodie” is Montreal freelance journalist, writer and teacher Denise Roig.

After years of teaching journalism, she’d had her fill of students who couldn’t construct a grammatical sentence. One day, she stopped at the neighbourhood store of the Pearson School of Culinary Arts and unexpectedly found herself following her passion for baking.

Published by the Winnipeg-based Signature Editions, Butter Cream is the captivating chronicle of her experiences, a memoir of her time in the kitchen learning new things — not only about baking, but also about herself.

Like Bill Buford in his bestselling memoir Heat, Roig put her career aside to become a food writer. Then she headed back to school for a year to learn how to make pastry and desserts.

Roig lays it all out in the narrative, honestly sharing her fears about why she is there and whether this is a wise career move for her at age 56 and the oldest member of the class.

The hard days are very hard, forcing her to look deep within herself to try to understand her frustrations and anger: “I hate being last or weakest,” she writes. “I hate not knowing what I’m doing, hate being the slowest, the oldest. I like being good at things, which is one of the reasons this pastry course is so hard on me.”

But alongside the fears and the struggles, she shares her passion for baking (beginning when she was 17) and the memories of learning from her mother, aunt and grandmother, who made the family desserts from scratch.

The book is studded with recipes, for butter cream and crème caramel, biscotti and breads. Each recipe is a link to key moment in her story, whether about the thrill of learning new ways to make old recipes, or the fear of making a new recipe the wrong way.

She bonds with many of her fellow classmates, their lives converging with hers, creating a shared experience. Some are there are there to make a career of pastry and baking, others simply to learn.

Throughout the year they come together and sometimes even tear apart, the pressure and the pace wreaking havoc on personal relationships.

There is a darker side to her story, too — the intolerance of some toward the six Chinese students in the class and the theft of someone’s gear leading to the dismissal of a classmate.

The push and pull between the instructors also create difficulties, putting the students between their teachers.

Roig writes with the passion of a devoted foodie. She describes the recipes and the resulting pastries so clearly and with such affection that one wants to run off to the bakery to pick up a few pastries.

In between, she peppers the book with snippets of her own life and history — her background in dance, her beginnings as a writer, stories of her family and children.

In some places this works, but in others the personal tidbits can be rather jarring, as they force the reader to pause to figure out the connections.

Her writing is clipped and to the point. The short sentences evocatively capture the highs and lows, the need to practise a skill until it becomes second nature, the realities of working hard.

Roig also frankly depicts the difficulties between people working together closely for extended periods of time: the petty arguments, the exasperation and the exhaustion, the frustrations that build into fights.

In the end Roig realizes it the sum of the experiences that keep her going, the enthusiasm and the camaraderie of her classmates balanced by the hard work and struggles.

Butter Cream is a charming book about the courage to follow one’s passion and the rewards of taking such a chance.

Julie Kentner is a Winnipeg writer who doesn’t bake nearly often enough.