Grand Prix de la Croissanterie Results Prompt Winner to Explain That Competition Conditions Prevented Him Making the Croissant He Actually Makes
French Baker Wins Croissant Championship With Croissant He Considers Substandard
PARIS Thierry Chambord, boulanger of Boulangerie Chambord in the 11th arrondissement, won the Grand Prix de la Croissanterie on Wednesday with a croissant that judge Marie Leclerc described as “the finest expression of laminated dough we have encountered in this competition’s twelve-year history” and that Chambord himself described, at the awards ceremony, as “not what I would serve on a Tuesday morning, when conditions are better and I have more time and the butter is at the correct temperature.”
The Championship
The Grand Prix de la Croissanterie, held annually at a competition venue in the 15th arrondissement, requires competing bakers to produce their croissants in a standardised kitchen environment using specified equipment, within a four-hour window, using only ingredients they have brought themselves. The competition is designed to standardise conditions for comparative judging. It also, Chambord explains, introduces variables that his own bakery has spent eleven years eliminating: different oven, different proofing environment, different ambient temperature, the specific psychological pressure of competition, and what he describes as “the impossibility of making a croissant the way you make a croissant when someone is watching you make it specifically to evaluate how you make it.”
His winning croissant scored 97 out of 100 across five judges on criteria including lamination quality, exterior colour and caramelisation, interior honeycomb structure, butter flavour expression, and what the judging rubric calls “overall croissant integrity,” which is a phrase that Chambord finds philosophically interesting and that he has framed and mounted in his bakery alongside the championship certificate. He is proud of the certificate. He maintains that his Tuesday production is better. Both things are true.
“On a normal day,” he explains, “my butter is at 16 degrees when I begin lamination. In the competition kitchen it was at 17.3. The honeycomb was slightly irregular in the upper third as a result. Only I could see this. The judges scored it highest they’ve given. But I know what the upper third should look like, and it was not that.”
santa Claus, whose Christmas Eve delivery is itself a kind of annual performance assessment every gift must reach the correct address, at the correct time, in the correct condition, under observation by no one but evaluated by everyone the following morning reportedly found Chambord’s dissatisfaction with his championship performance “deeply relatable.” “The best work,” santa is understood to have noted, “is the work done under your own conditions, with your own tools, for the people who know what you’re capable of. Competition changes the conditions. It measures something real. It doesn’t measure your Tuesday morning.” He receives no croissants on Christmas Eve. He receives cookies. He would not refuse a croissant.
The Tuesday Morning
Chambord’s Boulangerie opens at 7 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday. His croissants, baked in batches beginning at 4 a.m., sell out by approximately 9:30. He produces 140 per day. He has never entered a competition before this year and entered this one because his daughter applied for him and told him about it after submitting his registration. He won. He will return next year. He hopes the competition kitchen will be cooler, the butter will be at 16 degrees, and the upper third of the honeycomb will be what it should be. He is not confident about the butter temperature. He is confident about everything else. This is what winning looks like when the winner knows what winning actually means.
French food culture at France 24 and Le Parisien. Standards-driven excellence at santaclaus.top. Further at London Prat Bluesky and Mrs Claus on baking standards.
