Christopher Thé is a man of many titles: master pastry chef, Black Star Pastry founder, creator of the world’s most Instagrammed cake. But he’s not one to rest on his laurels. And now, the celebrated pastry pro adds another to the list – author – with the release of his debut cookbook, Modern Australian Baking. It’s a sparkling collection of recipes designed for all abilities, all united by a singular mission: to bring more native ingredients into cakes across the country.
Here’s Thé with how it’s done, and the magic of saltbush scones.
I wrote Modern Australian Baking while running a startup bakery! After leaving Black Star Pastry, I wanted to return to the kitchen and make food I loved. For some reason, I totally forgot all the hard work and long hours involved with starting a bakery, so this cookbook was written in fits and spurts in between bake offs and clean ups. With a title of such gravity, I felt a book called Modern Australian Baking had to be useful to everyone from home cooks to professionals and hopefully get more people into baking for the first time.
I had a newfound passion for native Australian ingredients and I incorporate them when it makes sense. I approach these ingredients with much respect to our Aboriginal people and use their knowledge as a starting point to create baked goods for our modern time. To me, it makes perfect sense to look at what grows in sympathy with our land and climate and I believe we will all be using them in our everyday cooking in the near future. The more everyday and common they become, the better. Eventually, native Australian ingredients will become a central part of our Australian culinary language.
Being my first cookbook after a long career in food, this book not only encompasses all my favourite things to bake, but it also needed to include some recipes for which a book on Modern Australian Baking would not be complete. On top of that I felt it necessary to have a go at a few technical recipes that at the time of writing, which worked in theory but had not been proven in practice. These were recipes concerning things I had been pondering about where food is heading in the future. Thankfully all these ideas came together beautifully in time for the book, and so the Modern Australian Baking encompasses the best of what I have made in the past, as well as amazing things to make in the future.
The main thing I learned writing it was the native Australian ingredients I knew when I started the journey were just the tip of the iceberg. Take lillipillis, for example. There are pink ones, green, white and red. For every berry there are countless variations growing somewhere in this land. Add to this the close relatives of lillipillis such as satinash and riberry, and I could happily keep trying new ingredients for the rest of my life.
Another interesting thing that happened is you start to see edible things everywhere in your travels. I even know where to find Atherton raspberries up the road in Camperdown.
Native ingredients can be a valuable addition to any baker’s pantry because they can add a lovely novelty to anything you bake. If you find you’re using the same tried and true recipes and things are getting a little repetitive, try adding native ingredients as an easy way to bring a bit of excitement to your baking. The number of ingredients growing in the lands around us is limitless and each one has a unique flavour. Right now sourcing these ingredients can be difficult but native Australian ingredients are becoming more common and easy to find.
Native ingredients I now consider staples at home include lemon myrtle, which I always keep in my pantry. It brings a lovely freshness to creams and custard and a little added to biscuits and pastry imparts a fresh zing. I’d say most Australians are familiar with lemon myrtle as a fragrance, and so anything you make with lemon myrtle will be well received.
Pepperberry really should be the default pepper in Australia. At Hearthe [Thé’s Sydney bakery and café] we’ve done away with salt and pepper shakers and only offer pepperberry salt to our guests. Grind up whole pepperberries and mix them with flake salt and watch it turn an attractive purple colour. It has a warmth and woodiness that brings out the flavour in meats and vegetables and is especially delicious on poached eggs.
Dried saltbush adds intriguing complexity when added to almost anything. It has the ability to transform the plainest of baked goods into something extraordinary. My favourite recipe in the book is the saltbush scones. Adding dried saltbush to yeasted bread dough gives it much of the complexity you see in sourdough bread without the extra time and work. And try it on lamb for a Sunday roast.
If you take one thing from this If book, it should be that becoming a proficient baker, who can confidently pull out a few recipes from memory is actually easier than it seems. I have a basic pastry recipe which is easy to remember and almost impossible to forget. It’s called 4321 pastry and can be used in so many applications. I never get bored with this one recipe. I use it in all sorts of sweet tarts, savoury pastries, canapés basically for everything.
But I’d also love it if you tried the unforgettable cake. The unforgettable cake is daunting to look at with has many layers, mousse domes and jellies. But when you break the cake into its components each part is quite simple so with a bit of patience, even a novice can pull it off.
If you’re a relatively new cook, give the saltbush scones a try. Dead easy. Four ingredients: self-raising flour, lemonade, cream, and dried saltbush. The effort to reward ratio of this dish is well worth it.
If you’re looking to extend yourself a bit more, meanwhile think about whether all the pastries we currently know, such as flaky, puff, croissant, are all that will ever exist, or are there still pastries yet to be invented? I have always been fascinated with the idea of a pastry made purely from dehydrated fruit.
Imagine a pastry case, made of dried pear and rhubarb, held together by the lightest of candy. It took two years of experimenting to make this idea a reality, which luckily coincided with the writing of the book! The result was beautifully sculptural, and also delicious. Deadlines can be a good thing in my world! Even though the technique was difficult to create, it makes perfect sense once you know how to do it. I would give it a go if you’re after a challenge.
When you’ve finished reading Modern Australian Baking, I hope you’ll add a native Australian ingredient to your next bake!
Modern Australian Baking by Christopher Thé (Hardie Grant, RRP $60.00) is out now and yours to purchase from great Victorian booksellers such as Readings and Hill of Content.