If you were to ask a random group of people what they like best about France – one thing you can be sure of is that many will say French cuisine and some will say “cakes”!
The history of cake making in France goes back centuries and the influences are many. The profession of a patissier in France is that of a highly skilled professional trained in the arts of baking, pastries, breads and desserts.
The oldest Patisserie in Paris is a store called Storher and you’d be completely right if you thought to yourself “that doesn’t sound very French” – the founder came from Poland.
The history of Stohrer Paris
In 1725, Louis XV of France married Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of the deposed King Stanislaw of Poland. Some tales claim that on her way to Versailles for the wedding, she stopped off in Strasbourg where at dinner she was served cake. It was love at first sight between the Queen of France to be and the cake called puits d’amour (wells of love). Marie then persuaded the chef to go to Paris with her where he opened up shop.
The truth is that the chef, one Nicholas Stohrer actually went with Marie to France when she left home to marry the French King. Stohrer had served his apprenticeship at the Court of King Stanislaw where he had proved himself to be a very inventive cake maker. He created the Ali-Baba cake which we know today as a Rum Baba, a sort of Kugelhopf, soaked in rum.
Stohrer Paris patisserie opened at 51 rue Montorgueil, now a very trendy shopping street in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris in 1730 and began preparing cake delights for the pleasure of the royal court. The Queen was said to be very fond of the puits d’amour cakes which Nicholas Stohrer made. He would fill the pastry shell of the cake with thick vanilla pastry cream, topped with a layer of caramel (though allegedly earlier versions of the cake were filled with jam).
La Maison Stohrer in rue de Montorgueil is still going strong today and is consistently voted in the top patisseries in Paris list for its éclairs and other delicious concoctions and you’ll often find a queue for cakes which threads out of the door and into the street. Inside the shop, murals on the walls and ceiling and big mirrors give an air of refined luxury, the glass cabinets are filled with beautiful cakes and pastries and the grand glass chandelier lights the room with a special radiance.
If you’re a cake monkey – you’ll love Stohrer!
More details website Stohrer Paris
