Why Artistic Baking?

Detail, delicacy, height and movement are all important in this autumn theme basket with natural colors.

Elaborate individual plating presentations, decorative buffets and luxuriant show pieces should all be part of a culinary professional's repertoire. In recent years, spectacular displays of food art can be found in most fine restaurants as well as upscale catering operations for both in-house and on-site functions. Indeed, an ever increasing number of culinarians have taken the extra effort to learn sugar and chocolate work, fruit and vegetable carving, ice sculpturing, etc.

Although all concentrations of food decoration are important, our imagination is often constrained or equipment by the facilities available for production, storage limitations and, of course, output time.

As in sugar and chocolate work, here fantasy and imagination have no limits.

While pastry chefs normally enjoy optimum working conditions for sugar and chocolate work, most chefs de cuisine do not. Ice carving requires raw materials that are often expensive or difficult to find. Where ice carvers are equipped for storage, most chefs have limited freezer space. Finally, fruit and vegetable carving, as gorgeous as they are, require that a chef's valuable time is occupied with its tedious work. A main factor in the decline of vegetable art is its short term resistibility and shelf life as even treated pieces alter considerably in just a few days.

The exploding popularity of Pane Artistico (Artistic Baking), is not only due to the striking finished product, but because of its user friendly technique. The ingredients for bread remains one of the least expensive accompaniments as they are still just flour, water, yeast and flavor. As well, most chefs already have the skills necessary for creative sculpturing as the entire technique is based on conventional baking.

Unlike fruit and vegetable carvings, these Porcini mushrooms will last for weeks and can be either used over again or stored for later use.

Finally, these stunning pieces, both large and small, can last up to six months and even a year, giving chefs the opportunity to spend less time on ambiance and more on making food taste great which is, after all, the most important element in our sector.

Artistic Baking is now part of several regular programs at ICI for the 2006 - 2008 sessions. Details are listed at the end of this page.