Peddling Pastries

BY RICHARD CORNISH

Chris Edwards is a pastry chef. He supplies daily with our fresh pastries that many enjoy with a cup of coffee. He’s also a perfectionist who has the same enthusiasm for baking rich buttery pastries that he had when he first joined the trade after leaving school. “I worked with an Austrian who, although slightly fear inspiring,” says Chris, “he had the most methodical style and produced the most wonderful pastries using simple ingredients like flour, butter, yeast and sugar.” Chris left to work in London working under some of the world’s best pastry chefs in the great bastions of cuisine, The Ritz Hotel and The Dorchester.

A lifelong love of Australia led Chris to immigrate in 2000 and then a change in his wife’s career saw them move to Central Victoria. Ten years ago, Chris founded his own bakery, Peddling Pastries. Based in the former Castlemaine Hospital site, he focuses on baking pastries and quiches. “Pastry is all about getting great quality butter into the dough and then fold it and turn it, fold it and turn until you have many layers,” he says. “That is the secret to light, flaky, and delicious pastry.”