Sebastien Blanc-Tailleur, a Parisian pâtissier, has always had a passion for confections. “I’ve been obsessed by pastry since I was a little boy,” he said. Since opening his eponymous business in 2015, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur has discretely become one of the most prestigious creators of wedding and special-occasion cakes in France.
“Pastry making is my own sweet form of madness,” he said with a grin. “But it comes from my family. My parents are collectors who love rare antiques, fine paintings, art and drawings, so I perpetuate the family tradition through the medium of pastry.”
In addition to making cakes and pastry, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur, 32, has also become a serious collector of antique books about pastry, especially cherishing those by the 18th-century chef Antonin Carême and about pastry molds. “With their shapes and intricate detailing, pastry molds are a unique expression of France’s gastronomic history and artistic heritage,” Mr. Blanc-Tailleur said.
“This guy has gold in his hands,” said Yannick Alléno, a Michelin three-star chef for whom Mr. Blanc-Tailleur had worked as sous-chef pâtissier at Ledoyen, a restaurant in Paris, in 2014. “He has an amazing humanistic sensibility and might even be the reincarnation of Michelangelo,” Mr. Alleno said.
With a ferocious determination to master the world of sugar, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur left home at 15 to become an apprentice to Christophe Turgot, a pâtissier who owned a pastry shop in the seaside town of Villers-sur-Mer in Normandy. “My father resisted my plan at first, but he came around,” he said, adding, “It was very hard. I lived alone, and I worked nonstop. But Monsieur Turgot was kind and took me under his wing.”
