Authentic French pastries have started popping up at The Bourgeois Pig and Decade in Lawrence, Kansas, thanks to Parisian chef Claude Aoun’s French Gourmet C.A. You’ll find an assortment of macarons, tarts and canelés de Bordeaux – glossy brown pastries with a crispy, caramelized exterior and custard center.
The chef arrived in Lawrence just last September after moving from France with his partner. Aoun brought with him more than 20 years of restaurant experience, most notably as head chef at well-known restaurant Aux Trois Petits Cochons in Paris. For now, he’s delivering his delicate pastries to Lawrence restaurants nearly daily and takes custom orders with 20 hours notice.
Tell us about your canelés. The base of the canelé is like the base of a crêpe, but I put vanilla and rum in it. You have to bake it in a very special copper mold that you can’t find [easily in the U.S.]. The thing that people like about the canelés is the texture; it’s not the texture they’ve seen before. It’s crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, and it’s not high-calorie. From 1 liter of base, I can make 34 canelés, and I only put [in] 50 grams of butter.
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What makes a good macaron? Each batch of 30 macarons takes 2½ hours because it’s delicate. Sometimes it works out really well, and sometimes no, and I don’t know why. It depends on [the] eggs, oven, me – everything. If you mix it by hand, not [using your dominant hand], you would have different macarons. Good macarons have to have a little crunch when you start to bite it, and then really soft. If you cook it two minutes more than necessary, you will have something too crunchy and too dry. Everything has to be very precise.
What kind of fillings do you use? Every day I like to change something. We have classic chocolate, chocolate-coffee, salted caramel, mint, coconut, pistachio and lavender. Maybe someday I’ll try something unusual, like lime and basil would be perfect – I love basil. I recently was inspired to make a peanut butter macaron because peanut butter is so popular in America – it was very successful.
What was the biggest challenge about moving from France to the U.S.? The oven. The French oven has turning, or convection, heat, so it gets everywhere. Here, it’s not 500°F [throughout the oven]; some places, it’s 415°F. Maybe five or six times I failed – it took two weeks to make perfect canelés.
Will you open your own place anytime soon? It’s a big project, and I have to learn English correctly first. So, it’s maybe too soon because I’ve been here for just a few months. I’ll try this for now, and we’ll see later. Maybe one day I’ll open a French bakery, café or restaurant. I don’t know. For the time being, people love my canelés and my macarons, so I’ll make what they love, and we will see.
French Gourmet C.A., 785.393.8827, facebook.com/FrenchyClaude