My day starts very early as is usual for a pastry chef. My alarm goes off at 3:15am. To be ready for the day I start with 10 minutes of morning exercise. I live in Osnabrück and cycle to work every day, no matter what the weather has in store for me, but it’s only a 4km journey to Leysieffer where I am the master confectioner. Cycling helps a lot, especially after work, both to clear my head and to keep fit. I start work between 4-4:30am and I start by looking at orders that have come for lactose-free products in since the previous day. I determine what needs to be produced and the rest of the time I help my colleagues with the production of all other products. I also liaise with my colleagues who coat our pralines or those in the packaging and shipping department, who so lovingly wrap our products. My work includes anything to do with chocolates and truffles – I simply love making pralines and truffles.
All our products are crafted by hand, which seems even more important with the small quantities of our lactose-free products, where craftsmanship is integral. Every piece of nut is placed on the chocolate by hand, every ingredient is mixed by hand and every truffle is coated by hand. That puts quite a lot of physical strain on the body, especially because I’m standing up all day. Towards Christmas, a working day can stretch to 12 hours sometimes. But the upside of it is that we’re producing little works of art each and every day and that we can make our costumers who are lactose-intolerant that little bit happier.
I find it really rewarding to see how single bits of ingredients like butter, cream and nuts can become delicious pralines or the way the meltedcocoa flowsinto the form to make a chocolate bar. Every day I am making something special. And I am particularly proud when one of my new praline or chocolate creations is taken on into our product range, just like recently the lactose-free chocolates and pralines. The craftsmanship is really very special, but we also use highest quality raw materials and ingredients. This makes for some rather unique products that cannot be found anywhere else. Since the end of 2013 we use sustainable chocolate almost exclusively, which again raises the quality of the products. Every employee can get involved and bring ideas to the table, which are then implemented, possibly modified or maybe not possible to be produced in larger quantities. My day ends at about 13:00.
Leysieffer started out as a café and pastry shop in Osnabrück in 1909. The company was and is a family business and nowadays has shops in 13 cities across Germany. A wide range of Leysieffer products is also available online at www.leysieffer.de