The "pro" version of the "Best Pastry Chef", a puzzle to judge?

• M6 launches this Thursday the fifth season of the

  Best Pastry Chef: The Professionals

  .

• Christelle Brua, pastry chef at the Elysée, joins the ranks of the jury while Pierre Hermé returns with a new role.

• “We have to judge the candidates to select those who deserve it without being mean or knocking people out,” testifies Cyril Lignac.

Desserts in the form of vegetables, Maroilles and Roquefort cakes… Did you dream of it (or not)?

M6 will do it!

This Thursday, the channel is launching the fifth season of

.

Exit the white tent of the amateur version, it is in the domain of the castle of the very first season of the program, used in 2012, that the candidates will go to the stove for ever more eccentric tests.

Seven pairs of pastry professionals will compete this year.

They have passed through palaces, competed in prestigious competitions or been recommended by major houses.

It is also by making the network of chefs who follow the show work that the cast was able to be formed.

The fourteen candidates will be judged by Cyril Lignac and a new recruit: Christelle Brua, pastry chef at the Elysée and the first woman crowned best restaurant pastry chef in the world.

At each event, both will be supported by a guest chef who will present the competitors with a challenge inspired by his universe.

A new challenge concocted by Pierre Hermé

And Pierre Hermé in all this?

The historic member of the program will still be there but gets a new role.

Each week, the two worst duos will be decided by the pastry pope during a final face-to-face.

The task will be difficult since only one member of each pair will have one hour and thirty minutes to convince this most demanding palate.

“We have changed the mechanics to bring a more professional dramaturgy, justifies Jérémie Atlan, director of entertainment at BBC Studios.

Being judged by Pierre Hermé added a layer of pressure.

They are not there to destroy themselves but they are in competition with themselves”.

And at the end of the season, the winning pair will have the opportunity to work with the chef to create a cake made available in several of his shops the day after the final.

"They are clearly playing their lives"

For Cyril Lignac, whose taste buds have tasted each of the cakes since the first season,

has nothing to do with his penchant for amateurs.

Their only common point is the name!

“There is a real difference in the technique, in the parts that are requested, in the judgment, he promises.

We are in the vein of a pure and hard pastry competition with tests that could be those of the best worker in France.

It is a program of public pastry utility to promote our profession.

»

The profiles of the candidates are not the same either.

To broaden the line, we go from a mother who makes pretty cakes of which she is happy to post photos on Instagram to real professionals who hope to accelerate their career.

“There is an exceptional issue.

They are clearly playing their lives, ”says host Marie Portolano.

When the involvement of the candidates is so important, one could say that the jury takes into consideration the impact of its judgment on their notoriety at the time of the broadcast.

“We judge a competition on the facts, not on the reputation that it could bring them.

It is the consequence but it is not an issue, retorts Pierre Hermé.

The advantage of the competition of the professionals, it is that one can be intransigent.

We try to put the forms in it but I never let anything go by”.

A last place to rejoice

Cyril Lignac, he assures that being on this side of the table "implies humility" since each of the judges has already played his place in a competition before.

“We have to judge them to select those who deserve it without being mean or knocking people out.

There is work, sweat, commitment, fear, stress, ”he lists.

So, he assures her, he tries to “find the words” so as not to inflict on others what he would not have liked to experience.

What about the first people to put away their cookie cutters after a week of competition?

“The pastry chefs selected are already part of the elite in a certain way, answers producer Matthieu Jean-Toscani.

Candidates have already been able to save their case, even if they were not winners, because it gave them a very beneficial presentation.

To gain visibility, it is still better to avoid flash passages.

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