Love is all you Knead

MANILA, Philippines - The aroma of freshly baked bread wafts through the hall of the Academy of Pastry and Bakery Arts in Makati. A class has just finished a week of lessons on breakfast pastries and they gather around a display of everything they have just made: golden croissants – some plain, some with slivers of chocolate – loaves of banana bread, glazed doughnuts and more, as Chef Angelo Van Toorn reviews each pastry with them, preparing them for their evaluation the next day.

“There’s never a time I don’t want to talk about bread,” says Van Toorn, who now shares his passion with students from all over Asia.

Based in the Academy of Pastry and Bakery Arts in Malaysia, the chef comes to the Philippines every two months to teach the bread courses in the academy’s Manila branch.

“The students here are very kind and easy going,” he says of teaching in the Philippines. “I love teaching here very, very much. They are eager and want to learn and always have a smile on their face.”

Being in the Philippines reminds the baker of home – Miami, Florida – with its sunny beaches and laid back vibe.

Before he started teaching, Van Toorn was chief baker at the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Teaching is much more difficult, he admits, but much more rewarding as well. “You’re sharing something that’s important to you, important to the world, with the next generation.”

Van Toorn adds, “I’ve been working in kitchens my entire life.” He started at 15 washing dishes, then making salads. But, when he was younger, he says he loved science and what he really wanted was to be a botanist. But, he realized that he did not have the patience to sit and study, so he decided to go to culinary school instead.

In school, Van Toorn specialized in Japanese food and sushi making. The turning point in his career came when he took a bread course. “When I made a real baguette for the first time, it felt like home and I was engulfed by it.” He calls his interest in baking an “infatuation” then, but he knew he was in love with it “when that infatuation never left.”

It is his teacher from that first bread class that Van Toorn keeps in mind when he mentors his own students now. “He really has a passion for bread that made me change my whole way of thinking, my whole life. I want to do that for my students.”

Van Toorn says, “When I take the bread out of the oven, it’s like the first time all over again. It’s like falling in love with your wife every time you see her in the morning when you wake up. I fall in love with bread every time I make the dough, every time I take it out of the oven. There was never a time that I didn’t love it and I didn’t want to learn more.”

In fact, Van Toorn even dreams about baking. His specialty is croissants, which he makes even on days off and ends up dreaming about. “I wake up wishing I was at work,” he says. The oven timer in his dream turns out to be his alarm clock and when he realizes that there are no croissants in the oven, he gets out of bed and starts making them for real.

“It’s like meditation,” he says. What he likes about making croissants is the process which is very technical and deceptively simple and when done right, the results are delightful.

Van Toorn estimates that he has made more than 10,000 croissants in his life, and the results are evident. The croissants that he teaches his students to make come out of the oven golden brown, perfectly laminated. The layers are crisp and the inside soft, light and buttery. Though his croissants are plain, there is nothing else that needs to be added to it. The delicious, pure flavor of the bread simply shines through.

Van Toorn talks about bread with passion – don’t get him started on people’s new-found aversion to carbs and gluten.

“We’ve been eating bread for almost 30,000 years,” he says. He even considers it one of the most important inventions in human history because once bread was invented – a form of food, together with cured meat and wine, that people could easily take with them – it gave them more mobility, opening up a world of exploration.

“With the invention of bread, people were able to travel the world. They could now expand, travel across the desert and through the forest, the plains and the mountains,” he explains.

Fittingly, Van Toorn’s most favorite bread in the world is a local bread found in a small village just outside of Alexandria in Egypt. It is handmade by an old lady in a hut who prepares the flatbread and cooks it on an open flame, much like it’s been done for thousands of years.

“It tastes like fire,” Van Toorn declares. “When I had this bread for the first time, I felt like I was eating bread that they’ve been making in ancient Egypt for thousands of years.”

Baking has also brought Van Toorn back to his childhood interest in science. One of the most interesting aspects of baking bread is how the dough becomes a living organism. “You create your own life from flour and water,” he says.

The way the dough is handled, as well as every element in the environment, can affect the baking of bread, he adds. “How you mix it, the water temperature, the temperature of the room, type of flour, how much yeast or salt… the bread is going to do something different. There are so many variables.”

The dough requires care and attention and the baker describes it as a baby: “You can watch it the best you can, but you can’t always predict it.”

To prepare for baking, Van Toorn checks the weather forecast each day. The flour soaks up water from the air in the room, he explains, so in humid weather, the amount of water used in the recipe should be reduced.

Good thing Miami weather is similar to that in Manila, so Van Toorn has not had to adjust much. “I feel very at home here in the Philippines.”

Beyond the exactness of science, Van Toorn says intuition and experience is also important – “You can’t control a living organism.”

He adds, “My dough, once it starts, you have to be able to talk with it, but you can’t speak, so you use your hands. Experience what the dough feels like, what it’s telling you.”

Van Toorn shares a baker’s saying on baking bread with “an iron hand wearing a velvet glove.” This delicate balance between precision and intuition, with all the elements working in harmony, creates a perfect piece of warm, delicious bread. “There is a whole universe of things inside this bread.”

Despite this delicate balance and careful process that goes into making bread, it still is a very humble thing – that’s why Van Toorn loves it so much. “You’re never going to meet anyone in the entire world who hasn’t eaten bread. Rich or poor, whether they’re from Africa, Antartica, Europe, Asia, America… they all have their own type of bread.” Bread is one of the few things that is unifying across all kinds of people from all over the world. “Everyone loves warm bread. It’s part of who we are as human beings. It’s something that we all have in common and something that we cherish so much.”

Wherever he goes in the world, Van Toorn says he cannot resist entering local bakeries to sample the unique types of bread offered there. In Manila, Van Toorn has tried everything from pan de sal and puto to Spanish bread and (with a chuckle) pan de regla.

As he gains more experience in the country from visiting regularly, he has started to develop his own take on local breads – pan de sal with the introduction of rye flour, a more Western ingredient with a hearty and earthy flavor, also studding it with raisins and walnuts. He also has a version using spelt flour, an ancient grain with a nutty flavor, which ties the local pan de sal to roots from the ancient beginnings of breadmaking.

Van Toorn adds a little bit of his expertise in Japanese flavors to a pan de regla made with nori and brushed with truffle oil. “It’s not red anymore, though,” he admits.

He also is experimenting with a healthier version of another local favorite, ensaymada, with feta cheese and olives, giving the usually sweet pastry a more savory take.

The baker notes that Asia has become a strong force on the baking scene, with Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China faring very well at international baking competitions with many innovations.

The Philippines, he says, is not at the top level yet, but definitely shows potential. “The Academy of Pastry and Bakery Arts put Malaysia on the map and it can do the same for the Philippines.”

He says aspiring bakers must have a good work ethic and passion, not just in cooking, but in life. It is a tiring job, after all – on your feet for many hours during the day, working through the holidays. It is often a thankless job, as well – bread is often considered just a simple, everyday food, nothing special. But the baker says, “Showpieces are nice, but it doesn’t feel like they really make an impact on somebody.”

Bread, however, makes its mark daily. “We take it for granted, but without anything else, we can still live on just bread and water. It’s something very humble and very meaningful.”

Van Toorn says, “When you eat a good cake, it’s great. When you eat a good piece of bread, it reminds you of home. You get a feeling of something inside you that’s good.” While bakers may not get the same kind of credit as other fancier chefs do, he says, “It’s a very important job. So much work goes into it.”

The baker assures, “If you’re passionate, the hard work will be easier.” As for Van Toorn, he certainly is not lacking in passion.

“Everyday when I come in and make the bread, I get energy. I don’t want to quit.

“Every time the bread comes out looking beautiful and smelling nice, it’s like the first time I ever made it, all over again.”