I returned to Paris solo last year and wanted to explore the city differently this time. As much as I love the Louvre and Musee D’Orsay, I wanted a new experience for my three days in Paris. While my cooking skills are severely lacking, I figured learning how to make croissants and macarons in Paris would be a more successful endeavor and less embarrassing.  If nothing else, I’d have a fun experience.  With so many people traveling in search of experiences and activities to do with family and friends, baking or cooking classes are a fantastic option to add to your itinerary.  I used a variety of sites to search for cooking and baking classes in Paris such as Airbnb Experiences, Le Cuisine Paris and Viator.

Learn to Make French Macrons in Paris

Le Cuisine Paris was my first stop online to see what classes were on offer during my June visit to Paris.  While many classes were sold out months in advance, I was able to find one spot at the 3-hour technical macaron class on a Tuesday morning in June. Class time was 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and an easy walk from Hotel Therese to Quai de l’Hôtel de ville in the 4^th arr along the water. The classes are small (generally ten or less people) and taught in English by our French pastry chef.  The cost was €69 which I felt was reasonable for the small hands-on class.  And I mean hands on – don’t think you just get to watch and try when you get home.  You are busy throughout the class time.

I was assigned to a station along with another solo traveler and we were in charge of the caramel (yum!).  There were ten students in five stations around the table with the French chef as our instructor. Each station would make the macaron shells as well as one filing to share with the group.

Did you know that macarons are gluten free, and all colored shells are the same batter?  The recipe uses almond flour and food coloring for the shells.

Ideally when you visit the patisseries and famous macaron shops such as Pierre Hermes or Laduree Paris the shell color will match the filling color so chocolate ganache would be in chocolate shells, vanilla in white shells, raspberry in pink, etc. In our class this day we would violate the rules just a bit when it came to filings.

I was surprised how easy it was to make the macaron batter – the hardest part was watching temperature to mix ingredients when it hit x degrees. Once the batter was mixed, first by the KitchenAid mixers and then by hand we filled the dough bags to distribute the coin shaped batter in even form on the baking sheets.  Our station chose purple and pink for the shell colors and while it was tempting to use all of our caramel filling, we got to choose the chocolate, lemon and other flavors made around the table.

The group was nine Americans and one Iranian (my teammate) and the conversations were not as chatty as you might think being Americans, we all were focused on our ingredients, temperatures and ensuring the end product would be delicious. Misson accomplished!

Making Croissants in Paris

We’ve all seen those social media photos and videos of the many layers to the ultimate flakey, buttery croissant and how hard it is to make them. Reading the description on the Airbnb Experience site about Maison Fleuret, I thought I might have a good chance of learning how to make the French croissant.  If nothing else, I was going to eat freshly baked croissants and pain au chocolate no matter what the final product looked like.

I first had to find the kitchen studio in the Saint Germain des Pres (in the 7^th arr) and it took a while as the street numbering in Paris makes no sense to me.  What should have been on the first block across from the range of addresses was actually on the second block and I walked back and forth a few times.  I even stopped to ask in the local hotel. The kitchen studio is about ten-minute walk from the Louvre. I found the gate to the courtyard and once inside, the frustration of looking for the address melted as fast as butter.

This light filled kitchen looked out to the courtyard and today’s class would have nine students (I was odd woman out) as each station was assigned two participants. We had a couple from Dubai, four recent college grads from California, a couple from Boston and me. Similar to the macaron class, there was little conversations other than related to our creations. Everyone was intent on perfecting the croissant.  In order to do that though, our instructors had to cheat a bit as we would use dough prepared the day before by the prior class.  At the end of our class, we would prepare the dough for tomorrow’s class.

Our stations were filled with flour and important to dust your station to ensure the dough didn’t stick.  We were given the refrigerated dough prepared yesterday and you could see the layers of dough and butter in between and if that alone didn’t whet your appetite for the French pastry then you were in the wrong class.

We rolled out the dough and played with the dimensions before rolling the croissants to put into the proofer before preparing the dough to be baked.  Once proofed, we brushed egg wash on top of the dough, labeled our sections on the baking sheets and loaded them into the oven for the final baking touches.  We then cleaned our stations to ensure we were ready to see the fruits of our labor.

Perfection!  The entire class had success with the croissants and pain au chocolate. Of course, we all had to try our creations fresh from the oven (after the social media photos were taken of course!) before packing the rest in our takeaway bags.

The staff at Maison Fleuret were lovely and I highly recommend taking a class when you are in Paris.  You can book directly with them – my cost booked via Airbnb Experiences was $88 for the 2.5-hour class (the afternoon class was 1pm-3:30 pm) which went by quickly as we were busy for the entire class.  They sell classes on their website, Airbnb, Viator and other sites so you may want to compare prices which will vary by day and time.  They also have private lessons and full studio rentals if you have a family or group who are keen to try their hand with the croissant dough.

Final Thoughts on Paris Baking Classes

I had such a fun time baking in Paris.  Each company/instructor broke down the complicated steps into very easy ones so that no one should feel intimidated or lost. What I had seen as complicated was in fact, not.  The hardest part of the baking classes was trying to eat all that I made because you do get many macarons and croissants to take home with you (home being the hotel in my case). I did manage to transport some (not all) macarons back to London to share with a friend.  I look forward to trying the recipes now that I’m home. Trying my hand at baking in Paris was a nice way to experience something new for a few hours in the city.  In the past, I’ve taken behind the scenes tours of a boulangerie (for croissants) and a patisserie tour in Paris (for macarons) so it was nice to learn how to make each on my own.  y