Pierre Herme. “Lighter pastries, with less sugar and fat, have always been an important focus for me.”

Madame Figaro. – How did the idea for this plant-based baking book come about?
Pierre Herme. – We have been noticing for a long time that there is a multiplication of groups of people with food preferences. First of all, there were “gluten-free”. Then we saw the emergence of lighter pastries, with less sugar and fat, which has always been an important area for me, and which I call “grounded pastries”. My job is to answer these expectations. Like everyone else, I’ve noticed a growing trend for recipes without animal ingredients. Five years ago, I thought nothing interesting was happening in this industry. It was when I discovered what baker-pastry chef Rodolphe Landemain was up to at Land & Monkeys that I wanted to dig deeper. A vegan herself, which is not my case, she managed to combine taste and aesthetics in these plant-based creations. So I started researching this subject. I didn’t want to trip over it, but have some deep thoughts. I initiated this process in 2020 in collaboration with La Maison du Chocolat, then spent two years testing solutions with my teams. We got help from Linda Wongdara, a vegan pastry chef. This is how after two years we were able to finish this book, which fully meets my requirements in terms of beauty and kindness.

This approach is of great interest…
It’s actually one of my secret pastry ingredients. I like to open doors.

Since your inception, you’ve been bridging the gap between pastry and creativity.
Since 1989, in fact, I have conducted eighty artistic dialogues with personalities of many creative horizons: architects, sculptors, painters, photographers… These are exchanges that give rise to unexpected things.

I couldn’t cook in a restaurant, but I know the techniques and the ingredients

Pierre Herme

In this spirit of openness, you have also researched delicious recipes for your Parisian cafes, Mamounia, Marrakesh…
I couldn’t cook in a restaurant, but I know the techniques and the ingredients. This allows me, with dedicated teams, to create recipes that suit us. So for our cafes, I really wanted to offer a delicious French toast, a real treat, but with a base on the border between pastry and cooking. We work systematically with this desire to merge links.

Do you have projects you are buying? ?
Periodically there are projects that emerge but are a bit incomplete. With my teams, I think about how to talk about pastry, present it in social networks in a different way. I think we need to imagine tastes, their architecture, and more broadly, a new way of displaying the profession. We also want to create our own school. Transfer is a duty in our professions. We welcome apprentices, interns, but I would like to go further, to have a more institutional dimension. It will probably allow us to develop bridges with other disciplines, personalities from different backgrounds…

You never stop !
I don’t know how to do it any other way. I’m pushing forward. It’s uplifting and positive.

Vegetable pastries, by Pierre Hermé with Linda Wongdara, Éditions Solar, 264 p., €39. In bookstores from November 2.