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I recall vividly, the first time I stepped foot into Jacques Genin’s chocolate lab.

It was my second visit to Paris in three weeks. I mainly came down so that I could give Monsieur Genin my resume, after meeting him a couple of weeks ago. After our chat, and his unexpected work proposal for me, he gestured his arms towards the beautiful spiral staircase in the salon de the.

I knew that his workshop was just at the top of those stairs, and I couldn’t contain my excitement when he asked me to come up with him.

As he opened the glass door for me, I inhaled and felt my nostrils fill with the rich scent of dark chocolate cascading from the enrobing machines. The room felt cool, as it has to be, and with my second breath, I smelled caramelized nuts and remenants of other fruit ganaches that were on the racks just beside the door.

The main room is beautiful, with three large marble countertops, a chocolate melter, enrobing machines and speed racks upon speed racks filled with trays of Monsieur’s tiny perfections.

He showed me the pastry room, just to the left of the main chocolate room. There were bowls of glazes and sugar warming over the gas ranges, the ovens midbaking his signature long, slender eclairs. “You’ll work here as well, during your two years.”

He took me to the ganache room, opposite the pastry room, where the temperature was noticeably cooler. A couple of girls were busy on the guittard, cutting slabs of ganache into perfect little squares.

We were back in the main room shortly after, and he asked me to wait for him while he went off to take care of something. I stood there, taking everything in, and I remember thinking that this could potentially be my home for the next two years.

And then I noticed something. I didn’t see it before, but I couldn’t help but stare once I did notice. One of the staff was cutting hazelnuts.

Not chopping..but cutting. He was working alone, and beside him, was the biggest container of hazelnuts I had seen. There must’ve been 15 kgs worth of the nuts in the clear container. He was using a paring knife, and I saw that he was meticulously cutting the hazelnuts into pieces, and had the cut pieces in a neat pile off to the side. I thought it was a rather tedious and odd job. Do they not have a food processor? Could he have not just run over the nuts with a bigger knife?

During the three weeks that I’ve been working here, I noticed that meticulous hazelnut cutting job gets passed on to everyone in the pastry section. Everyday, someone is stuck standing there, cutting hazelnuts for a good hour.

Today, one of the guys in pastry gave me a piece of the Paris Brest to try.

And then it all made sense.

Paris Brest is a classic French pastry. It`s named after the famous bicycle race from Paris to Brest, and the ring of choux pastry is supposed to resemble a bicycle tire. It`s traditionally filled with a praline buttercream of some sort.

I`ve seen Jacques Genin`s Paris Brest before of course, but I`ve never tried it. He fills his choux ring scarily high with swirls of the buttercream, dusts it generously with icing sugar and from under that, pokes out pieces of toasted hazelnut.

The best Paris Brest I`ve had so far, was at Patisserie des Reves, but after trying Genin`s today… its a close call.

Luscious, thick, hazelnut dotted praline buttercream, sandwiched between tender choux pastry…and toasted hazelnuts on top.

It suddenly made sense to me why Monsieur Genin doesn`t just put the hazelnuts in a food processor. That would just crush the nuts, and produce uneven pieces.

I asked one of the guys who work in pastry, how Monsieur likes the hazelnuts cut. “Into 4 pieces,“ he replied.

Four pieces, each hazelnut gets cut into.

That way, each hazelnut piece (about 15ish pieces on each ring) that goes onto the Paris Brest, is just the perfect size. It`s not the same texture if you bite down on a choux that`s been sprinkled with odd bits and pieces of hazelnuts. Cutting the hazelnuts just in half would be much too large, and whole pieces would just be silly. A lot of other Paris Brests I`ve tried before simply just had silvered almonds sprinkled sporatically on them before baking. No love.

I`m actually looking forward to the day when I have to quarter those hazelnuts.