Earlier this year Sodexo announced its partnership with the world famous Ecole Lenôtre, where every year it will send up to 40 of its chefs from its Independents by Sodexo business to Paris to undertake an intensive three-day course, with each year focusing on a different skill.
The course was held last week (22-24 October) under Lenôtre’s chef baker, Dominique Levier, a professor in bakery and viennoiserie. The nine senior chefs from Sodexo were taught the science behind bread from the different flours and how they perform depending how they are treated through to the wide range of speciality breads which can be produced and finally about the presentation of the bread from the different patterns and shapes which can be created.
The chefs who attended this first course are responsible for the company’s innovation hubs at independent schools across the country, including Eton College; Licensed Victuallers School, Ascot; Abingdon School, Oxon; Woldingham School, Surrey; Tudor Hall School, Oxon; Bedford School and Reed’s School, Surrey.
Tom Allen, executive development chef for Independents by Sodexo said: “Our chefs are already baking fresh bread each day but after this training they will be on a completely different level, you can’t beat the smell of freshly-baked bread and if you get that basic food to an exceptional standard, the rest of the food will follow at the same high level”.
“And it’s not just these courses in Paris which our chefs will have the opportunity to take part in, there will be numerous opportunities for them to attend master classes on various subjects, recently a handful of our chefs visited Cacao Barry’s UK Chocolate Academy in Banbury, Oxfordshire where Lenôtre’s head chocolatier gave a master class in using chocolate.”