Learn to Steal With the Eye: How I Learned My Craft

Fresh out of high school, a pastry chef told me to “learn to steal with the eye.” It took practice with laminated dough—and later, seven-sided tourné potatoes—to understand the value of that advice. 

Fresh out of high school, I began my apprenticeship at an airline catering company where we made our own puff pastry and croissant dough amongst other things. It was there, in the temperature-controlled pastry room, that one of the pastry chefs gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten.

Learn to steal with the eye.

I took those words seriously. I watched how the chefs worked, asked questions and wrote things down. I tried to remember the details, including mixing times, the number of folds a dough should get, how they handled the dough and what they looked for as they worked. 

There’s a certain kind of excitement and confidence that comes over you when you see others doing something with expert precision over and over again. It’s almost as if your hands are itching to give it a try. There was plenty to learn through observation, but eventually I had to put that knowledge into practice myself.

Learning What the Dough Was Telling Me

Under the supervision of my mentor, I began working with smaller batches of puff and croissant dough. I soon discovered how much judgment was involved in something that could look relatively straightforward in the hands of an experienced pastry chef. When something didn’t turn out as planned, I looked at him questioningly. He just smiled and told me that I would eventually get to know the feel of the dough.

Sometimes the dough resisted when I was rolling it out and sprang back because I hadn’t allowed it to relax long enough. Rolling out the dough with more pressure wasn't the answer. Working too forcefully could contribute to uneven butter distribution. I also had to learn to judge when the butter was at the right temperature to be locked into the dough. Butter that wasn't sufficiently pliable could break rather than move with the dough.

I had to learn to recognise these problems and adjust the way I worked. There was a difference between remembering the process and being able to feel when the dough needed different handling.

Gradually, my results improved. The layers became more even and better defined. As I progressed to larger batches, the work demanded greater concentration, control and coordination. Mistakes that might seem small when working with a little dough became more consequential as the quantity increased.

What I remember particularly well is how much I enjoyed practising. If it hadn’t been for my meagre apprentice wage, I would’ve made croissants at home more often.

I found comfort in that repetitive rhythm. There was something deeply satisfying about returning to the same task, noticing where I could improve and seeing those improvements in the finished work. Each attempt gave me something to pay attention to the next time.

Seven Sides, Not Six

Later, during my early years as a commis chef at a luxury hotel, I encountered another technique that required the same patience, although I learned it under quite different circumstances. The duties of the commis chefs in that kitchen were to work a rotation on the graveyard shift to cover the late-night room service, prepare for breakfast and complete a list of mise en place handed over by the dinner service. On that list were always about five types of 80–100 tourné-shaped vegetables.

I remember how one sous chef demonstrated how to turn a potato into the classical seven-sided tourné shape. He showed me the technique once, and that was the extent of the demonstration. But I noticed that some of the other commis chefs were producing potatoes with six sides. The standard I had been shown was seven, and I wanted to learn to do it properly and consistently.

So I practised at home whenever there was an opportunity to do so. 

The challenge was controlling the knife well enough to produce the curved sides with some uniformity. A bird's-beak tourné knife is suited to this work because its short, inward-curving blade can follow the rounded contour of the potato as the cook shapes each facet. But having an appropriate tool is only part of the process. The control still has to come from the person holding it.

I experimented with different ways of managing the cut, paying attention to the shape I was producing and adjusting my approach. With continued practice, I eventually found a technique that worked for me.

Making one acceptable tourné potato was an achievement. Being able to repeat the result was what I was working towards. In a professional kitchen, an occasional good one wasn't enough.

I spent a great deal of time practising that cut, and I enjoyed seeing my work become more consistent. The satisfaction was much the same as it had been with the pastry, even though the circumstances in which I learned were different.

With the pastry, I had the opportunity to observe experienced chefs, ask questions and practise under supervision. With the tourné potatoes, I had been given a single demonstration and was largely responsible for working out a reliable technique through my own practice.

Simply repeating something doesn't necessarily improve it. I needed to notice what had happened, understand what I could change and then put that adjustment into practice. Sometimes the improvement was small, but it was there to be seen in the result.

Over time, I needed less guidance to recognise when something was going wrong. I was developing the judgment to make corrections for myself.

A well-made pastry or a neatly turned potato may look like a small accomplishment to someone who has never attempted either. To the cook who has spent time learning the technique, the result carries the memory of all that practice.

Stealing with the eye isn’t just for the professional line—it’s how you build a useful framework that survives long after you've closed the recipe book. I always tell home cooks to focus on the cooking process rather than the clock. Recipe timers are just polite suggestions. You have to trust the physical reality of the food in front of you.

If your pastry dough is fighting back, it needs more rest, no matter what the recipe says. When a technique goes sideways, don't just blindly do it again. Pause, separate one variable—like your knife angle or the butter temperature—and see what happens. And if you really want to nail a skill, practise it a few times in a single afternoon rather than once a year.