In an age where almost every joke about “Hitex” ends with one imitation of “Great Country” or a complaint that “there is no ramen on the menu today”, other types of hitchhikers also emerge, people with an artistic mind who understand the source of the jokes, but prove that not everyone complains Too many types of bread in the kitchen.
Dror Cohen is one such. His career path led him from service in the USSR and the Intelligence Corps directly into the arms of Microsoft, right as soon as he was discharged from the military and for the next 15 years. After a grueling day of work a new baking recipe he invented.
“It means the name, and also a take on the Microsoft product line that came out at the time with the 365 logo. I felt it was almost another product of the company,” he says.
Today he is releasing a new book called “Bakery 365 and Friends”, which is not a classic baking book, but one that combines not only baking recipes of various degrees, but also guest appearances by the best chefs and confectioners who agreed to take part in the almost impossible project to perform: Israel Aharoni, Mickey His name, chocolatier Ika Cohen and baking guru Estella are just some of the familiar names of those hosted in the book.
What about a senior at Microsoft and such an obsessive preoccupation with baking?
“When I started the blog I was not yet a senior, but from a very young age I had an attraction to the field of cooking and baking. At some point in life I decided I wanted to start specializing in it, and signed up for Estella’s confectionery workshop. “Some kind of tear-jerking story. So I just found myself after work sitting and sharing my experiences in Estella’s workshop, producing every evening after the kids go to bed a new recipe, a recipe for every day.”
Baking and distance
The blog began to gain momentum and caught Cohen by complete surprise. Until then, he maintained relative anonymity and did not connect “Dror Cohen the high-techist” to the baker who maintains Bakery 365. Apart from friends and close family, colleagues at Microsoft also did not believe that one of the network’s most viral people is a senior development team manager in the company’s cyber department.
“For the past three or four years, I’re already decided it’s time to get out of the closet on the blog topic,” he says. “And people cheer. My colleagues know I’m dealing with it, and not only accept it but also respond to me about things I bring up.”
Cake from Bakery 365 (Photo: Ronen Mangan)It does not destroy the distance?
“I’ve never had a distance, I’m just not that type. I’m very transparent with my people. It took me a while to come to terms with that exposure, and I’m fine with that. .
The exposure culminated when, following pleas from the area, Cohen decided to participate in the “Perfect Dessert” program on Keshet 12, and even received a phone call from his high school teacher who saw him on TV and was filled with pride. “There I realized it was, I’m already out. People also recognize me on the street sometimes from the blog and the show, and that’s it, it’s a new reality.”
At this point people usually leave the job and start a new career. Where did it catch you?
“This is the first question everyone always asks me, when do you leave Microsoft and open a bakery or something like that. So it’s not going to happen. Look, it has not happened until now, I love my job and am in a profession where most people are three years old and immediately move on. For the next job or company, and I’m already closing my 15th year at the company.
“It was my first job after the army and it’s a high tech thing … but the subject of baking and confectionery also comes to me mainly from an artistic place. Just as a painter feels the need to paint, I feel the need to end a day working in the kitchen and create new recipes. “Including the book, at the moment it’s just extra for me.”
In the end, the catharsis of every recipe maker including chefs and confectioners is the taste, the pleasure of the customers who come again and again. Doesn’t it tickle you that someone will taste everything you make?
“I do not have such a hidden dream. First of all it is very hard physical work, and secondly, because I see in this work art, I can not constantly create the same thing. I must challenge myself with something new until it succeeds, and once I succeed already “I’re not interested in making it anymore. A confectionery that sells should produce the same cakes to the same standard, and that’s not me. Maybe in retirement I’ll open something I do not care about its profits, and then I will bake a different cake according to the mood every day.”
Cake from Bakery 365 (Photo: Ronen Mangan)Cook for himself
Cohen, the youngest son of Moroccan parents, grew up in Dimona until the age of 18, and when he enlisted in the Modiin service, he moved to live alone in the center. “First of all, Dimona is an amazing community city and I had a wonderful childhood,” he says. “As a teenager I was socially active, in the municipal youth council, in a local newspaper and on the radio. But military service made me independent very quickly. I had my own apartment already at 19, and I guess it was another trigger to start cooking and take care of myself, when I am a soldier away from my parents.”
Working in high-tech was a kind of dream come true immediately after graduation, and his parents are still afraid that he will leave the permanent and respectable job. “When I published the book, my mother said to me, ‘Leave, why do you need to? You have a tidy job and a good livelihood.’ .
He is currently married, a father of four and lives with his family in Raanana. The new book is dedicated to his beloved nephew, who died about three years ago of rapid and violent cancer. “I am the youngest son in the house, my brothers are very old by a gap, and my nephew was like a little brother to me. He always saw me as a kind of model. We were very close and he studied computers after me, went to enlist in intelligence and was also a food lover like me. Fast and deadly. “
Shortly before he published the book, Cohen began to combine the “365 and Friends” project as a kind of digital booklet published on the website.
“The nephew passed away shortly before the first issue was downloaded, and Cohen assured himself that from now on the whole project would be dedicated to him. During the mourning period the close friends and colleagues Cohen approached enlisted for cooperation almost without hesitation.” It was very exciting that everyone enlisted, It’s not obvious with people of this size with an almost impossible schedule.
The 14-chapter book begins with a short story about Cohen’s acquaintance with each guest and his impact on his professional path as a confectioner, recipe and tips for the guest, and four recipes from Cohen’s fevered mind, who stands in the kitchen after a day of work and after children go to bed. In the home kitchen almost in the dead of night.
“The book is accompanied by illustrations by Ella Cohen, an Israeli illustrator living in Berlin, in a very Instagram concept. No books are published today but I really wanted to do it for me, for the prestige – ‘Here I published a book’ People, and we did the same thing only in print. “
What do you think of the high-tech jokes lately? Insists on proving it’s not like that?
“Look, I can not say it is not like that. You see it from the outside, but in our world very much see it inside. Unfortunately the rabbi has people who complain that there are not enough types of bread in the kitchen or those who will always find what is wrong. But I think it is mostly “It’s a matter of character, I really appreciate what’s there and I’m not complaining. It’s a matter of worldview, but I think there’s a lot like me. There’s a mix of people in this world and I’m not at all unusual.”
By the way, Microsoft’s chef Haim Cohen, who is in charge of the company’s catering, suggested to Cohen the confectioner that he prepare the dessert that brought him to the finals in “The Perfect Dessert.” “It was the first time I made such a quantity of desserts. I made 1,000 corn desserts and it was crazy. Microsoft even bought a huge mixer for it, which was not in Haim Cohen’s kitchen, just so we could put it into practice.”
Cake from Bakery 365 (Photo: Ronen Mangan)So if they now offer you such a role in the company, do you refuse?
“Obviously. I have no problem teaching people to make the recipes but not really standing in the kitchen.”
What is most important to you?
“First of all I started this blog with the aim of creating something different in the Israeli blogging landscape. One of the things I do not compromise on is the level. I mean, I have easy recipes but I do not get stuck there, I sometimes take recipes that can be very complicated and make them accessible to those who have not studied Confectionery.
“I admit I’m very excited that people are taking on the challenge of making something they never dreamed they could, like a tiered cake that requires two days of preparation, and professional things that end up with the right accessibility and patience whoever wants to do it is definitely capable. It’s great for me to know that someone did something professional without any training and was successful. “