West Vancouver's own candy man and pastry chef, Steve Hodge, is now melting hearts as one of the Food Network TV's newest and sweetest personalities. Owner of Dundarave's beloved Temper pastry and chocolate shop, Steve is now starring in two television series - Project Bakeover (where failing bakery businesses get a helping hand) and the Great Chocolate Showdown (where contestants compete to win over the judges with their latest chocolate creations). Hear what's it's like behind the scenes as the cameras are rolling and the heat is on, in the kitchen.
0:00 Intro
2:00 How did you become a chef? You were on your way to career in business / commerce.
I never made it to the actual behind the desk. I quit my first day. I graduated with a business degree. And for some odd reason, I wanted to be a broker and I wanted to go to Wall Street and I wanted to trade on the floor. And it literally took two buddies I spoke with, who are actually now in Hollywood, and one of them's quite a well known actor, to convince me 'Hodge, what are you doing? That's not your personality'. I took a year off the university and worked in in Hollywood and kind of figured out what I wanted to do. And I fell into cooking. I didn't know I was going to be a pastry chef or a chocolatier. I just thought I was gonna be a cook, Chef. And, you know, you run into opportunities. And one of them was a chef I was training under and I asked him a question about a pastry thing I saw on a book. And it was almost like a challenge. And he said, Oh, no, that's at a different level. And it kind of caught my eye and I was like, wanting to try it. And I tried it in culinary school and I never looked back. I fell in love with pastry.
4:50 There’s an art to being a chef. Baking is different than cooking. Tell us why you choose a pastry chef. Tell us about some of the science.
I never paid attention in science class in high school, but for some reason I really enjoyed the science side of it. So it wasn't understanding, okay, you add this ingredient to that ingredient and this reaction happens. What I love - the challenge on what we do in chocolate and pastries, is your environment. So even though I have 20 years experience, or you can have 40 years experience, you're always faced with the environment around you on a daily basis, whether it's raining out whether it's sunny out, and that affects how you bake. How you proof a croissant, how you temper chocolate. And that's the challenge I like - so every day is different. It's not like throwing sauteed onions and garlic and celery every day. That doesn't change. But when you're working with chocolate, let's say it changes every single day.
7:10 Opening a business here in West Vancouver. Tell us about the process. Who are your partners. How do you make it happen.
I do have a business partner - it is my sister Kristen and I literally wouldn't have been able to do it without her. She deals on the financial side. She's the numbers person and then with our experiences coming together it really works. So I'd love to take credit - but if she's listening to this right now, she would kill me if I took full credit.
So when we opened up Temper you know obviously we had a vision of what we wanted to make and carry and offer to the our clientele, but we wanted to have fun with it. It's kind of like the name 'Temper'. I never wanted my name because it's it doesn't sound really French or sexy.
8:40 How did you come up with the name of your bakery Temper? And you have some special items named after you daughter. Tell us about this.
I wanted to play on words and to have fun with it. So, you know, obviously it's named Temper because in everything we do in cooking we have to temper things, especially on the pastry side. We have a play on words with chef's temper temper tantrums and we have fun with that. So then we said let's have fun with the food. So instead of naming like traditional things,
