Manhattan Beach Attorney Makes Pandemic Shift, Opens Vegan French Bakery
May 04, 2021 09:39AM ● By Jeanne Fratello"I don’t want to make anything shiny and perfect looking. It's all about creating something that is simple, with the idea that 'less is more,'" she said. "It’s hard to do 'simple and great.' It’s easy to add on stuff and cover it up. When it’s this simple, it has to be great."
At Tuesday's market, Eliad-Sene expects to offer individual chocolate, pistachio apricot, almond pear, and berries and cream tarts; as well as slices of lemon pound cake and chocolate marble cake - plus a few other surprises.
Making a Career Shift
Eliad-Sene was raised in France in a French-Romanian-Israeli family, has a Senegalese husband, and has lived and traveled all over the world. She described her family as a "mixed melting pot" of artistic and creative personalities.
She and her husband and their children settled in the Los Angeles area, where she had a career as an entertainment industry lawyer. As a lawyer, she said, she provided a bridge between the creative side and the legal side, but she yearned to use her own creativity.
"I facilitated everyone’s creativity for years and years. I was the perfect mediator between these two worlds, but I always missed doing my own things," she said.
She had always loved baking and was especially intrigued by vegan baking after she became a vegan. (Veganism is defined as eating no animal products, so no eggs or butter are involved.) Vegan pastry chefs need to tap into their creativity to make pastries just as delectable as their traditional counterparts.
As a vegan baker, Eliad-Sene says she relies on a variety of natural ingredients, such as potato protein (which can be whipped up to imitate meringue) apple cider vinegar (used for leavening and flavor enhancing), and tapioca starch (used for thickening and crisping). And yes, she uses sugar, although she uses it in moderation, "the French way."
After training in France with some of the top vegan bakers in the
world, she was eager to bring that craft back to California in some form. But it was the year of the pandemic that finally convinced her to turn that love into her new career.
"This COVID year I decided I wanted to trust my intuition and listen to the entrepreneur vibe here in California," she said. "I decided I’m just going to launch this business. This is my passion, and I do it well."
A Natural Fit for the Farmers' Market
Rogers said that the market is fortunate to have a team of artisanal food vendors who are not only passionate in their craft, but who are working to better the community.