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Erin Kanagy-Loux – The MacGyver of Pastry

Pastry Chef Erin Kanagy-Loux

Pastry Chef Erin Kanagy-Loux is a Brooklyn-based pastry Chef who grew up in Japan, Philadelphia, and Oregon. Building on the Pennsylvania-Dutch baking traditions of her family, she went on to study and teach in prestigious culinary institutions like Le Cordon Bleu and the French Culinary Institute. Today, she’s known as the “MacGyver of Pastry” thanks to her deep and thorough understanding of how ingredients work. She’s mastered the creative art of substitutions, and she’s defied expectations by scaling small-batch quality in the high-numbers world of professional catering.

What you'll learn with Pastry Chef Erin Kanagy-Loux

Why Erin Kanagy-Loux has so many different regional influences (3:15)
Her memories of culinary Japan (6:52)
What it is about Japanese food that keeps Pastry Chef Erin Kanagy-Loux coming back to it (10:28)
Miso 101 (11:01)
The difference between Western and Japanese sweets (11:53)
Traditional Pennsylvania-Dutch foods (15:03)
Learning from-scratch-cooking through Erin Kanagy-Loux Amish roots (17:06)
How she decided to become a pastry chef (19:54)
Mentally constructing a 37 layer cake (23:59)
How to scale quality in the catering world (30:16)
What Erin Kanagy-Loux loves about teaching (32:21)
Why she’s considered the “MacGyver of pastry” (36:04)
Her favorite niche-ingredient of the moment (39:51)
A food tour through Brooklyn (41:29)
Series of rapid-fire questions.
Link to the podcast episode on Apple Podcast

Links to other episodes with Pastry Chefs

Conversation with Antonio Bachour from Miami

Interview with Elizabeth Falkner

Conversation with Philip Speer from Austin

Interview with Emily Spurlin from Chicago

Conversation with Baker Matthieu Cabon from Houston

Interview with Mark Welker

Links to most downloaded episodes (click on any picture to listen to the episode)

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I have a huge salty tooth. I love making pastry, and I know I'm good at it. But if I have an option, I want something salty. 

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I draw a lot on my experiences and my memories from Japan. A lot of the time I'll go back to Japanese food because they have such a unique way of imparting saltiness without using salt. 

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I saw pretty much every single variable of things that could go wrong with almost every product you can think of. Figuring out how to problem solve is awesome. 

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I forgot how much joy it brings me to give people the tools to do what I love doing. 

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MacGyver of Pastry – I have a wealth of useless knowledge that is very useful in certain situations, and I’m able to retain a lot of random information, whether it's pastry related or not.

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