Alisa
Baking & Pastry Arts, George Brown College
Alisa is two years into the Baking & Pastry Arts Management program at George Brown, which means most of her week is spent in a teaching kitchen — often from seven in the morning, occasionally until ten at night, always being marked on what her hands produce.
Choux is the one she kept coming back to. It is the least forgiving dough on the curriculum and the least amenable to shortcuts: cooked once on the stove to dry it, then again in the oven to set it, with an egg-by-egg window in between that no recipe can tell you the end of. You learn it by feel or you do not learn it.
So this is what it is: one bake a week, a fixed number of boxes, and a menu that changes because a student’s week changes. Nothing is made in a quantity she cannot personally stand behind, and nothing is filled until the morning it is collected.
The kitchen, honestly
A home kitchen, registered
This is a home food premises in Toronto, operating with notice given to Toronto Public Health and subject to inspection like any other food business.
Everything is labelled
Every box carries a full ingredient list, the allergens in bold, and the date it was baked. If it is not on the label, ask before you eat it.
Not an allergen-free kitchen
Wheat, dairy, eggs, and nuts — particularly hazelnut and almond — are all handled here, on shared equipment. Cross-contact cannot be ruled out, so severe allergies are not something this kitchen can safely accommodate.
Keep it cold, eat it soon
Anything with cream or custard goes in the fridge on arrival and is at its best the same day. Choux shells lose their crispness within hours — that is the pastry working as intended, not a fault.
Come and try the choux
The menu goes up Sunday, 8:00 pm. Orders close Wednesday, 11:59 pm.