Once again, the top professional prize from Le Grand Prix Elmendorf du Pain goes to an out-of-town bakery: Recognition for best croissants went Sunday to Lakon Paris, which has shops in Brookline, Brighton, Boston’s Seaport and the Newton Highlands.
Second prize for greatest croissant went to Flourhouse in Newton, and third place went to the Praliné French Patisserie in Belmont.
A blushing Jenny Kiangkaew of Lakon accepted her prize – an (inedible) croissant lamp affixed to a small baking tray – after strapping the bakery’s signature deep brown apron on over her chef’s whites.
Lakon has had lines out the door for months as its croissants and chocolate cream cubes have become social media phenomena, but judges at the Grand Prix were pros, including Maura Kilpatrick of Sofra, Jeffery Alexander of the Johnson & Wales culinary school, Rachel Sundet of Mamaleh’s and Brian Mercury, the Puritan & Co. pastry chef.
In this third year of the Grand Prix, sponsored by the Elmendorf Baking Supplies cafe and shop and the East Cambridge Business Association, there were 19 competitors taking part in the switch to pastry from baguette baking.
“In some ways it was harder, because laminated pastry can be so particular,” said Sara Fetbroth, a hospitality consultant working with Elmendorf and ECBA on the event. “You can’t just judge a croissant by its look. It’s actually so much more about flavor. The judges while they were tasting were saying how interesting it was for them to be like, ‘Oh, what a stunning, beautiful design.’ And then they went into it and they’re like, ‘There’s really nothing, no flavor there.’”
The 45 amateur bakers in the competition, meanwhile, picked up the bread baton and made demi-baguettes – the half size making sense for kitchens that may not have the oven for a full-size version. “If some of those amateur bakers had access to a professional bakery, they could do some serious [work] at a professional level,” Fetbroth said. “The top nine could totally hang in a bakery if they had professional equipment.”
The third-place winner for demi baguettes was David Goodman, a Newton resident who calls himself a guitarist who works in anesthesiology “to buy my flour”; second place went to Asier Marcos Vidal, an imaging specialist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, who came with a crowd of supporters; the first-place winner was Anze Godiceli, a graduate student at Harvard Medical School.
Teddy and Alyssa Applebaum, co-owners of Elmendorf, opted to let others speak in the third year of a festival that has thronged Cambridge Street from the start and grown each time in geography, number of vendors and attendance. This year brought in conservatively 7,000 people, up from 6,000 a year ago, according to estimates from Fetbroth and East Cambridge Business Association executive director Jason Alves.
Lines were so long at many stands that some visitors to the festival said they ultimately walked away without so much as a crepe; and at a noon-to-4 p.m. event, some stands were packing up early in the final hour after been bought out of all the pastry, oysters, raclette or other foods they brought by van.
“Even Batifol” struggled to keep up with demand despite having a brick-and-mortar location less than a mile away in Kendall Square, “and we loaded up,” Alves said.
“Droves of people were walking up from the T and coming from Inman Square. This is insane,” Alves said.
Next up, Alves reminded a crowd waiting to hear the winners’ names, was the Smoke This Rib Fest in September.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
What a great event! At Cambridge Volunteers, we love the annual Grand Prix and the whole trifecta of East Cambridge Business Association events which help knit the community together. Plus, they all rely on individual volunteers. If you want to help at ECBA’s Ribfest on Sunday, Sept. 29, email Maddie Ball at info@cambridgevolunteers.org.