The Chocolate Man

The founder of Valrhona’s chocolate school, renowned pastry chef Frédéric Bau is a master of the dark, milk and white arts of cooking with cocoa. 

- Tiffany Chan

You may know Frédéric Bau, you may not. Bau is famous in the world of chocolate. The master chocolatier founded Valrhona’s first pastry and chocolate school, L’École du Grand Chocolat – later expanding it to three outposts in Versailles, Tokyo and New York – travelled the world as the brand’s ambassador, and penned four cookbooks, all of which have become definitive guides for pastry chefs around the world. His early mentor, famed French pastry chef Pierre Hermé, has cited him as “the most talented and creative person” with whom he has worked. Yet Bau credits much of his success to luck.

“I don’t like star chefs,” he says. “Pierre Hermé always said, and he still says today, ‘Don’t forget guys, we are only making cakes; we are not saving lives.’ People are always looking for stars, but chefs who come to Valrhona want to see how chocolate is made, they want to improve their own level of cooking. They are not coming to see Madonna. There are Madonnas all over the world.”

Bau may not come from a long line of pastry chefs, but he has always known exactly what he wanted to do. “When I was young, my mother was an ambassador for Tupperware. Every Friday evening, she would invite 10 to 12 housewives to bake and perform demonstrations with the moulds. The whole house smelled like cake, and I dreamed of pastries,” he recalls. In 1985, he apprenticed with venerated chocolate pâtissier Claude Bourguignon in Metz, France. “I lost my father when I was 12, and I looked to Claude Bourguignon as a second father.” He later moved to Paris, where he met Hermé, who became his mentor and friend and taught him much of what he knows about pastries and chocolate.