Malaspina chef aims for the World Baking Cup

Bill Clay is preparing himself for one of the toughest competitions of his career.

Next week, he competes in Mexico City as part of Team Canada in the qualifying round for the prestigious World Baking Cup.

Clay, a Culinary Arts instructor at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo and two other top national chefs, Tracey Muzzolini of Saskatoon, and Didier Julien of Halifax, will have eight hours to create a winning masterpiece from scratch showing the importance of bread in Canada.

“Team Canada is competing in the Louis Lesaffre Cup qualifying round against Mexico, Panama, El Salvador and Costa Rica in order to qualify for the World Baking Cup finals in Paris in May, 2008,” explained Clay. Forty-five teams from around the world are competing in regional competitions for a coveted spot at the world finals.

The World Baking Cup, held every three years, is an internationally renowned event created in 1992.  Three-person teams from various countries compete in a number of disciplines. In 2008, those disciplines include baguette and specialty bread, Viennoiserie (breakfast pastries), and artistic baking.

“Each team walks into a kitchen with nothing except raw ingredients, and has an eight hour time limit to prepare their product,” said Clay.

Clay recently spent a week in Quebec with his teammates and coach, Chef Mario Fortin of Montreal, practicing for the regional competition. “We re-created our entry five times,” said Clay, who's making the artistic piece for Team Canada.

Clay’s creation includes several elements made entirely from bread - a First Nations face, a canoe, Canadian flag, wood burning Forno Bravo oven, a large maple leaf with wheat growing out of it, a wheat scythe, a train and trestle and a grain elevator. He uses spices including cayenne, turmeric, chili powder, black cocoa, beet and carrot powder to add a unique colour effect to his artistic creation.

Is Clay nervous about the upcoming competition? “Making the showpiece is the easy part because I’ve practiced making it 15 times,” he said.  “It’s the unknown aspect of baking in a new kitchen (in Mexico) with unfamiliar equipment at 8,500 feet above sea level, in a non-air conditioned kitchen when it is 30 degrees Celsius with 100 percent humidity that worries me a little bit. You never know how things are going to turn out. I can only call on the training I received here at Malaspina in 1988 under the tutelage of now retired Chefs George Wagner, John Hannon and Alex Rennie to guide me in my decision-making if I get into trouble.”

Clay graduated from Malaspina’s Culinary Arts program in 1989, and completed his apprenticeship at the Fairmont Empress Hotel. He joined Team Victoria and competed at various international competitions, earning a gold medal in Singapore and silver at the Culinary Olympics in Frankfurt. He also competed as pastry chef at Food Asia in Singapore as part of Team Canada, and returned with silver medals in the hot and cold food competitions.

During his career, Chef Clay honed his culinary arts and professional baking skills at high end hotels including the Pan Pacific in Vancouver, the Jasper Park Lodge in Alberta, the Delta Hotel in Whistler and the Delta Airport Hotel in Vancouver. He rejoined his colleagues and mentors at Malaspina as a Culinary Arts instructor in 2003.