Writing Sample

3:00 a.m. - Daily Bread

The sea is calm and inky black, and as the ship glides across its moonlit surface, the passengers are enjoying that special kind of sleep that happens only here, outside ordinary time and space. It’s a sleep that caps a day of sightseeing, relaxation, and deeply satisfying eating and drinking—a sleep lulled by gentle forward motion and the promise of new adventures ahead, made all the more comfortable by the knowledge that someone is taking care of you and anticipating all your needs.

At this moment, that someone is Corporate Pastry Chef Olivier Simon, and as he stands beside the sheeter in the pastry galley on Deck 4, the need he is addressing is croissants. He cocks his head, and a look of skepticism crosses his faces as he pauses to watch José Sijo, a pastry assistant from India who has just rotated onto the midnight shift, rolling triangles of dough. “Non, non,” Olivier calls out in a gentle singsong as he steps up to the counter. “Quick and light. Like this.”

He flours his hands as he has done thousands of times since he began his pastry apprenticeship in Corsica as a small boy. Resting his fingertips on the wide end of a triangle of dough, he flicks his hand toward himself, creating a perfect, symmetrical roll. As a demonstration, it’s almost comical, like when a magician reveals the secret of a tricky sleight of hand and then invites someone in the audience to try.

But Olivier is more than an internationally renowned pâtissier. He’s also a teacher who has trained countless chefs from all over the world both on the job and at the Ritz Escoffier School in Paris. “When someone doesn’t know what to do,” he says, “you can’t just tell them. You have to listen, you have to watch, you have to understand what they don’t understand. And then you have to show them.”

José gives Olivier’s rolling technique a whirl, and after several cautious attempts, he’s begun to get the hang of it.

“Voilà,” says Olivier. “You press too hard, you smash the layers. You’re gonna get a chewy croissant. Too light, and you have big, ugly air pockets. It has to be just right. Just exactly right. Every time, eh?”

The triangles have been neatly trimmed from a sheet of dough that has been twenty-four hours in the making, with half a dozen “turns” of folding, chilling, and sheeting—a process known as lamination that builds up the layers of butter that will give the pastry the perfect balance of flake and fluff. It’s the traditional French method, and even at sea, even at three o’clock in the morning, there are no shortcuts.

“We want our croissants and our pain au chocolat to taste exactly like what you would get at a great bakery in France,” Olivier says. “Maybe even better.” How do you do that every day on a ship that could be anywhere from Marseilles to Mumbai? “Look. It’s simple. It’s maybe not so easy, but it’s simple. You start with the right ingredients, and then you do it the right way.”

That means, for example, that wherever an Oceania Cruises ship finds itself on the planet, every croissant begins with premium Planchot flour from the Vendée region of western France. Prized for its rich flavor and low gluten content, Planchot imparts a delicate crumb to everything from cakes to pastries and bread. It’s expensive, costing up to three times as much as American all-purpose flour, and in order to keep all of the ships stocked with a freshly milled supply, the flour must be shipped from France to the company’s Miami warehouse, from where it is dispatched once a month in three-thousand-pound batches to the fleet all over the world.

The butter is no less sacred. All over the world, when preparing the daily viennoiseries, which include croissants, Danish, and brioche, Oceania Cruises chefs work exclusively with Elle & Vire butter imported from Normandy. While typical butter has around 80 percent butterfat solids, Elle & Vire is quite literally the crème de la crème at 84 percent. It is what is known as a dry butter, the best kind for making extra-rich, flaky baked goods, and on the ships, it’s reserved solely for this purpose.

Then, there is the secret ingredient. Following a method perfected by the great French pastry chef Gaston Lenôtre, the dough is enriched with a touch of heavy manufacturing cream, also brought in at considerable expense from Normandy.

Once José finishes rolling out 180 croissants for the morning service, he’ll move on to make fifteen dozen of Oceania Cruises’ other much loved breakfast signature, the pain au chocolat, which uses the same croissant dough, cut into rectangles and folded, wallet style, around bars of Valrhona dark chocolate, one of nine brands of premium chocolate used on board. “For this particular purpose, Valrhona is the best in the world,” says Olivier, grinning as he snaps off a piece to snack on. “And we put two bars in each pastry, so you bite into two melted chocolate layers, not just one.”

Meanwhile, a second nighttime pastry team is putting together the doughs and setting up production for the day ahead. Every twenty-four hours, each of the company’s ships goes through more than three hundred pounds of Planchot flour, as well as fifty pounds of an even rarer type, Viron—grown in the Beauce region of France and milled in Chartres—which is used exclusively for baguettes at dinner service. Olivier calls Viron “the Rolls-Royce of baguette flour—the one the great bakeries use.” Its flavor has a hint of hazelnut, and it’s the secret to a crisp, golden crust and a perfectly soft interior. “We really do make the only truly authentic baguettes at sea,” he says.

By 4:00, the breakfast pastries and breads have proofed, and the morning baking is under way. And by 5:30, trays of still-warm baguettes, freshly baked bagels, English muffins, scones, breads for toasting, Danish, quick breads, and muffins are being whisked to the Grand Dining Room, the Terrace Café, and the room-service galley.

With the exception of just two items—naan and pumpernickel—every bread, roll, bun, cake, cookie, and pastry served on Oceania Cruises is baked from scratch on board. The pastry galley, which also creates all of the desserts for the ship, never closes, baking three times a day, so that whatever is served at breakfast, lunch, teatime, and dinner is always fresh from the ovens.

“It’s challenging in some ways at sea, this job,” says Olivier, tearing off a hunk of baguette to examine its interior. He takes a taste and gives a quick nod of approval to no one in particular. “We could use a little more space, more refrigerators. But at the same time, out here, we have everything. We have all the best ingredients, we have the staff, we have the time to focus with no distractions and really get it right day after day. For a baker, that’s a dream.”

3:00 a.m. - Full Circle

In the Deck 4 pastry galley, José Sijo has just finished sheeting the dough that was mixed at this same time yesterday. He cuts the sheet into long triangles. Stepping back and taking a deep breath, he checks his watch. He’s decided to time himself each night, to mark his progress.

“Go,” he says out loud, and begins rolling croissants, doing his best to channel the light touch of Olivier Simon. He’s mastered the technique, but not the speed. That will come in the weeks and months ahead.

It’s quiet on board. The bars and restaurants closed hours ago. Even The Lion’s Cave—the crew bar hidden away on Deck 2 that comes to life at around 11:00 p.m. after dinner service—is now empty and dark.

For the crew, it’s been another full day. The galleys and storerooms are loaded with a fresh supply of ingredients. Stocks, sauces, and soups have been made, and fresh fruit and vegetables meticulously prepped. Tea has been brewed, martinis mixed, Champagne poured. And four thousand handcrafted meals have been served.

José checks his watch again: 180 croissants in sixteen minutes. Not bad. Tomorrow night, he’ll shoot for fifteen. He moves on to the pain au chocolat.

Behind him, another pastry assistant is cutting open a massive sack of Planchot flour to start the détrempe—the flour, butter, and cream mixture that will eventually become tomorrow night’s croissant dough.

As light gathers on the horizon and another day begins, the sea is calm. The passengers sleep soundly. The work continues. And the ship sails on.