He’s No Cream Puff: Pastry Chef Johnny Iuzzini Shares His Secrets
Photo: Michael Spain-Smith
Johnny Iuzzini is an old-school success story. He started as a teenage dishwasher in upstate New York and went on to work with some of the greatest names in the food world today: Daniel Boulud, Francois Payard, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Pierre Hermé. Along the way, he won awards, starred in Bravo’s “Top Chef Just Desserts,” crossed America on a motorcycle, and wrote two books. The latest, Sugar Rush: Master Tips, Techniques, and Recipes for Sweet Baking, is out now.
What got him this far? A killer work ethic and the pursuit of perfection. “The biggest fear in my life is being mediocre,” he admits.
There’s nothing “meh” about Sugar Rush. Three years in the making, it’s 300-plus pages of pastries and baked goods. “A lot of work went into that sucker,” says Iuzzini. He purposefully hired a non-food photographer, Michael Spain-Smith, to capture a vibe that’s different from traditional cookbooks. “We wound up with 85,000 images. It took months to go through everything.”
The book is meant for the home cook with a passion for pastry. “Both my parents worked,” he explains. “So it wasn’t like the previous generation where we learned how to cook and bake from our mothers and grandmothers. So many tips and tricks are being lost. So this book is like, ‘Hey. Let me be your grandmother. I’m going to show you how to bake and we’re going to start from scratch.’ It’s almost like a cooking school in a book, but in a fun and familiar way.”
His top baking advice? It comes down to three things. Read the recipe the whole way through, put all the necessary equipment on your counter before you begin, then weigh out all your ingredients (he’s not a fan of measuring cups). “Man, that’s 75 percent of the game right there,” he says. “Now you’ve set yourself up for success.”
In addition to promoting his new book, Iuzzini is currently working with Le Meridien, the French hotel chain, on a project called The Éclair Diaries. He’s crisscrossing the globe on a Ducati motorcycle and investigating local food scenes with a camera crew in tow. His first destination was San Francisco, and future stops will include San Francisco, New Orleans, the French Riviera and New Delhi, with more to come.
But Iuzzini’s big project, the one that gives him sweet dreams and nightmares in equal measure, is a bean-to-bar chocolate factory he hopes to build in the Catskills. He grew up in that part of New York and wants to help the economically distressed region. “To bring some needed relief to the area and be back where it all started for me would mean a lot,” he says. “It’s a long process. Every day I feel like ‘don’t quit, don’t quit, don’t quit.’”
The chocolate factory will be the base for a larger project that includes retail outlets and a product line; he’s working with the Start-Up NY economic development program and meeting with investors to secure the necessary funds. This kind of raising dough doesn’t come so naturally to the chef. “It’s scary as hell, to be honest with you. I don’t know the first thing about going out and asking people to invest millions of dollars,” Iuzzini says. “But in the end, it comes down to me. Me standing in front of someone and saying, ‘Believe in me.’”
Based on his track record, he should be just fine. But if you happen to have a million dollars to spare, you can connect with Iuzzini on Twitter. While we wait for his hometown Wonka factory, here are a few life lessons from his interesting journey:
Earn your own money: “My dad said, ‘If you want to go out with girls and go out with your friends, get a job.’ I found one at the local country club as a pot washer in the kitchen. All my friends got caddy jobs there. They didn’t have to work when it rained. They didn’t have to lug golf bags—they drove golf carts. By the time it was dark, they’d go home with tips in their hands. Meanwhile, I smelled like a swamp and made no tips.”
Work your way up the ladder: “I came home and I told my dad, ‘Hey I got a promotion. I got a raise.’ He said, ‘What are you now?’ I said, ‘I’m a dishwasher.’ He was like, ‘I thought you were a dishwasher.’ I said, ‘No. I’m a pot washer. Now I get to use the dish machine and I get 25 cents more an hour.’ I was so proud to tell my dad I’m doing good and I could see in retrospect he was probably laughing.”
Play by the rules (sometimes): In high school, Iuzzini participated in a technical program that focused on all things culinary and he participated in cooking contests against other students. “I took second place, so I went to the state finals,” he says. “I got disqualified for sneaking out of my hotel room. They let me take part in the competition and then they told me at the end. The judges [had] put tape on all the doorjambs so they could see what doors had been opened overnight. Lesson learned.”
Embrace your sensitive side: Iuzzini’s mother was a certified wildlife rehabilitator, so he grew up an animal lover who helped nurse possums, raccoons, woodchucks, wild deer, and other forest creatures back to health. At 17, he got a job at the River Café in Brooklyn and one of his daily tasks came as a shock. “I had to come in and rip the heads off 30 live lobsters every morning. I couldn’t handle it, man. It was breaking me. I noticed that the pastry chef would be in the barn outside making fantastical things. Chocolate bridges and butterflies and sugar stuff. I said, ‘What is this? I want to learn.’”
Talk the talk: “At one point, in one of the kitchens where I worked, I was the only American pastry cook. They treated me poorly. ‘You’re stupid, you’re American, you don’t get it.’ They’d speak French all day. At one point, my boss said to me, ‘You learn French or get out right away.’ After that, I enrolled in the Alliance Française [in New York City]. I learned French really fast because I refused to let them beat me.”
Show respect: Iuzzini’s first book was dedicated to his late mother; Sugar Rush is dedicated to his father. “He’s the guy who instilled a certain work ethic in me. He told me, ‘Nothing is going to come easy for you. We weren’t born rich, you won’t have certain opportunities. But you can have whatever you want. You just have to work hard for it.’ Telling me that at a young age, pushing me to get a job, helping me stick with it through the French beating me up, whatever it was, he was there. I’m happy I was able to get this book out and have him see it.”
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