Dominique Ansel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dominique Ansel | |
|---|---|
 Ansel in 2017 | |
| Born | 1978 (age 46–47) Beauvais, France |
| Culinary career | |
| Cooking style | French pastry |
Current restaurants
| |
Award won
| |
| Website | dominiqueansel |
Dominique Ansel (born 1978)[1] is a French pastry chef and owner of Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City. He is best known for his invention of the Cronut, a croissant-donut hybrid.
Raised in a working-class family in Beauvais, a small city an hour north of Paris, Ansel is the youngest of four children.[2] To help support the family, he dropped out of school at 16 and worked at a restaurant.[3] He also trained for three years at the free local culinary school, apprenticing as a cook in various local restaurants – first working in savory and then in pastry, gravitating most strongly to the scientific precision of pastry.[4]
At age 19, Ansel did his mandatory year of military service in French Guiana, cooking as part of a community program teaching locals how to cook.[4] When he returned home, he bought a car with his savings and began driving to Paris and dropping off his résumé at bakeries, and quickly got job offers.[4]
