In this series, British Baker talks to people from across the baking industry to find out about their career path, what their job involves, and the latest trends that are shaping their work.
We’re looking to showcase a diverse range of talent and job types across the industry, so if you’d like to be involved, please email dan.riley@wrbm.com.
Name: Cyril Audoin
Age: 47 years
Job title: Production quality assistant technician (PQAT)
Company and location: Brioche Pasquier UK, Milton Keynes
Education: Law degree
Tell us about your career to date:
At the age of 20, I saw an opportunity to work as a patisserie line operator for Brioche Pasquier in France. Based in Les Cerqueux, where the company was first founded in 1935, I produced more than 500 entremet recipes over the years. Little did I know that I would spend my entire professional career to date with this company.
As a family owned business, Brioche Pasquier is focused on developing its team and spreading knowledge around the different business units and manufacturing sites. For me, a new challenge arose in the form of a move to the UK in 2018 to work on its range of retail products. Making brioche is very different to patisserie so I’ve undertaken lots of training and learnt from scratch how these products are made – ingredients, mixing, recipes, the ovens, and general baking process.
Our Pitch range of snacking products started to really take off at the time and new lines were added to the Milton Keynes factory to meet demand, so I switched over to the Pitch line. This was quite a different process as the range has fillings and is individually wrapped.
Having been promoted to PQAT this year, I’m now back on the plain brioche roll line and really enjoying my new role.
Explain your job in a sentence (or two):
My job is to ensure that the line operators have the skills and experience to make quality and safe products for our consumers. I am also the guardian of the safe execution of recipes and baking process, ensuring that all packaging is up to code and compliant to be sold into retail.
What does a typical workday involve for you?
We always start the day with a line tour to ensure the environment is safe and ready for production. We discuss with the team any queries, issues or updates they might have regarding production and factory environment. I would then spend time training and assessing our team to pass knowledge on to the line teams. We always end the day with a line tour to ensure everything has gone to plan and we’ve had a successful day.
Tell us about a challenge you have overcome recently:
We have to be incredibly responsive to client requests such as audits or providing other information. Recently we had several requests at the same time which increased the pressure due to the suddenness of their nature. However, as always with Brioche Pasquier, we all worked together to manage our time and workload, ensuring our customers were happy and received the information they needed.
What are your career highlights so far?
Working with my colleagues has been the highlight. We have built great relationships over the years, and it’s been a big opportunity to discover a new country and different culture.
What’s the biggest misconception about your role?
That it’s an easy office job!
What advice would you give to up-and-coming talent in the baking industry?
Fast maths. Know how to calculate without using a calculator; working things out in your head is quicker. And above all, you need to care for the products you’re making and have pride in your work.
Interested in a career in bakery? Check out Foodmanjobs for the latest vacancies
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