The Artisanal Industrialist

Francis Holder built a billion-dollar bread-and-pastry empire by mixing American mechanical production with traditional French techniques. Now the Henry Ford of baking is savouring his greatest success—selling millions of macarons to the classes on Madison Avenue and the masses at McDonald’s

- Chloe Sorvino

At his pastry factory in Lille, France, where the air smells like chocolate, Francis Holder is wearing a white baker’s coat, his name embroidered on the front, over a tailored blue suit and red-striped tie. Paintings dating back centuries cover the three walls of his office. One is a portrait of a young baker wearing a stained coat and a floppy toque. Another depicts a dog chewing on a baguette. One more shows a hand coming out of the shadows to steal a loaf, an apparent homage to Jean Valjean’s petty crime in Les Misérables. There’s not a famous artist to be found in his 8,000work collection. The only requirement is that each painting must focus on Holder’s billion-dollar passion, baking, or his favorite obsession, bread.

The fourth wall is made of glass so Holder can stare across the hall at the research-and-development centre for Château Blanc, the industrial arm of Groupe Holder, the private baking conglomerate he founded and controls. The 77-year-old loves to spend his days watching over the experimental bakeshop’s seven mixers and three countertops, checking in with the chefs throughout the day to sample the test runs. “We are industrialists with the mentality of craftsmen,” Holder says.

Just down the hall, past dozens of office employees all wearing matching white baker’s coats, is the heart of Château Blanc’s 100,000-square foot factory, which now makes the company’s most craved product, the macaron. The heart of Holder’s masterful assembly-line operation is a machine with a conveyor belt the length of two football fields that bakes more than 30,000 meringue macaron shells an hour.