Emmanuel ‘Gus’ Reckel
Itinerary of a banker turned baker

So what made you decide to become a baker?

It was a personal and professional business strategy as well as the lack of market supply. A combination of all of these, I think.

First, I’ve always been an early riser, so you could say I’m predisposed to baking. However, it was mainly when I realised how good bread was so hard to find in New York that I thought about training and going for it.

I wanted to do the Compagnons du Devoir but I was too old. So I looked at the French Culinary Institute in New York. They have a big programme for pastry and another for cooking. They also have a less well-known bread programme, which is very hands-on and in line with my needs and expectations. Above all, it was intensive: in ten weeks, you learn all about French baking techniques, bread but also viennoiseries and everything that uses leavened dough.

That’s all I use today at L’Imprimerie. We’re very transparent with our customers: we have this very authentic side that ties in well with my French origins, the tastes that I loved when I was a kid and that I share today, so yes, we’re the French Bakery of the neighbourhood and we offer what our customers expect to find in a French bakery.

However, since we’re in New York, we’re free to introduce a few little twists because we have a wide community that goes beyond our French customers. We do chocolate with jalapenos, cinnamon rolls with croissant dough. You could say we have something of a Dolly Parton aesthetic: a bit cheap, but very, very authentic.

Is artisanship in your DNA?

Being a baker is probably more important to me than being French, even if I am what I am. I can handle that and I play on my origins, that’s for sure. Nevertheless, what interests me is to be true and honest and make my business work.

We have a quality approach: each morning, everything is freshly prepared by us and cooked on the spot. I don’t see the point of making a strawberry tart out of season just to make our offer more French. This is not our promise.

I offer a different vision of food in my neighbourhood, this idea of slow food and high quality. But also a presence and a place to live in the heart of the community. I’m neither a co-op nor a neighbourhood association, but during COVID-19, for example, we were there every day and for many people we were a landmark.

Our customers are hipsters, Bobos, guys who work in the City, but also people of more modest means, who work at the hospital just down the street. The idea of quality food should not be the reserve of just a few. I’m trying to develop a business that is sustainable, i.e., economically viable, but that fits in well with its community. I pay my staff on time and my suppliers too. But make no mistake, we work hard, we don’t bunk off.

Being a baker is a tough job in a difficult context

Yes, it’s clearly a difficult job.

During the pandemic, a lot of people started making bread at home. And that’s great because it did them a lot of good, especially for their wellbeing. The kneading itself is quite a meditative experience and then there’s the smell of the dough, the contact, the texture. Frankly, bringing a loaf of bread to life is an incredible sensation.

However, there is a huge difference between fantasising about changing jobs while you’re making your bread at home and actually doing it. The reality of the job is that you have to be there every day, every night, preparing your recipes, shaping your breads, baking them, etc. You carry heavy bags, you stay in the kitchen andit’s hard work. When you are standing all day, you get this feeling of producing, producing, without looking up, even in a craft environment. Some people find it too hard in the end.

Our job is a physical, technical and scientific one because dough is a living material.  Depending on the heat, the cold, the hygrometry, it doesn’t react in the same way and you have to adapt.

And of course, being a baker also means being a company director, with all the different hats that you have to wear in today’s world: communicating, selling, managing, recruiting. So yes, you have to keep your feet on the ground. Because I haven’t been a baker all my life,  I often feel like an imposter compared to other bakers. However, I think that I may be a little ahead of the game when it comes to managing a business. Having had a previous career has turned out to be very helpful.

You also have a bit of a militant side, don’t you?

No! I’m not here to give lessons to anyone. Not about bread, not about anything. When we launched L’Imprimerie, we could have made a big fuss in the press, made ourselves known in the City, played that card, but I didn’t feel justified going down that route. I’m not one of those bakers who’s been in the business forever, because I didn’t take a specific trade qualification like all the others, and maybe also because today I use my American passport more than my French one.

So yes, there are things that make us happy, like when we were voted best pain au chocolat in New York: we feel that people recognise that we do the job properly. But that’s where it ends. There’s only one thing I want to do and that’s my job, properly!

I want to be at the heart of people’s lives, to create this place where they are happy to come, where they feel good. I want them to recognise us for the quality of what we sell them. Our customers decide what label they put on us.

Do they call us the neighbourhood’s super French bakery or the super queer bakery? That’s fine, just as long as we can see the word “super” in front. I’m not an activist, I’m here to keep my customers coming and coming back, to pay my bills at the end of the month, and to have fun in what I do every day.