How Global Pastry/Bakery Competitions are Driving Innovation and Influencing Creativity in Modern Viennoiserie Products

By Jimmy Griffin

Competition preparation is the ultimate laboratory and cradle of creativity. It enables pastry chefs and bakers to do better, to push their individual creativity and innovation to new levels, inspire others and benefit the industry. By engaging and participating, candidates not only improve, but the exposure to others inspires and drives creativity. The world of bakery and pastry is merging with a new form of creative and attractive goods, capturing the eye and imagination of consumers, which sustains sales and growth. Often, products created for competition influence the industry and become mainsteam products.
As a teenager and young bakery apprentice back in the 1980s, I was introduced to the competitive side of baking while a student at The National Bakery School, located at the Dublin Institute of Technology, in Kevin Street, a stone’s throw from the famous St Stephen’s Green in Dublin Centre. “Bakex/Catex” were trade shows held most years at the RDS, a famous arena for show jumping and small exhibitions. It was also used to hold many national competitions in all aspects of life including bakery and catering. The American company Kraft also ran annual bakery apprentice competitions for students across the island of Ireland. The competitions inspired me to compete, to go and see what others outside my class groups were doing, and I thirsted for the knowledge I would find at these events. Having had some successes (and failures), I felt the aura and draw of competition would stay with me throughout my baking life.
Progressing from successes over the years in national competitions in the mid-1990s, I was selected as a candidate for the country’s first international baking team and I was team Ireland’s viennoiserie candidate for three cycles of competition. I went on to become the team coach when I stopped competing, myself, in 2001. My first international competition was The Coupe d’Europe de la Boulangerie (CEB), held biennially in Nantes, France. Our first venture saw us finish seventh of 12 international teams. We took photos with SLR cameras and brought the films home. It took another two weeks to develop them so we could examine the magnificence of the winning teams’ products up close and personal. Team Ireland learned from the experience, practiced and improved. The team competed from the mid-1990s through to 2007, winning several bronze, and one silver at the (CEB). The Team also won gold at the first IBA cup in Germany. Team Ireland also competed in the Bakery World Cup, the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (CDM) in 2002.

From my experience as a competitor, I noticed trends and a general improvement in standards and innovation of bakery and pastry products. Competition drives creativity and innovation, as you have to go back to compete with new ideas, forms, flavors and a wow factor to win over the jury members. Speaking in this column on Viennoiserie, as creativity began to take off, inspired by previous competitions, I feel it sparked a commercial demand for nicer, more attractive products. While the real butter croissant, pain aux chocolate and pains aux raisins had always been global staples of French viennoiserie, breakfast items — newer innovative shapes — began to become more noticeable across pastry shops in Europe, Asia and the USA. These new and attractive products, mentioned in my previous article in Pastry Arts Magazine, such as the Cronut, Cruffin, Supremes, Bicolor Croissant and cross-laminated pastry styles among others, exploded in popularity. Additionally, they evolved into every day/all day treats and were no longer just breakfast items. While many reasons exist for this popularity explosion of pastries, social media platforms have been hugely influential in spreading the news of hot new trending innovations by posting the photos to global audiences.

These images and videos being posted by creators of fine viennoiserie have been harvested by national teams and international competitors who take creative ideas to a different level and make them their own, whether by introducing new shapes, filling, color or techniques. So, let’s examine some of the world’s best competitions and examine samples of the genius and innovation developed in recent times. Most competitions have two bakers/pastry chefs and some have three. The format is generally a bread baker, a viennoiserie baker/pastry chef and an artistic piece creator. When there are two on a team, they generally share duties and assemble the artistic pieces from prebaked pieces brought to the event.

• World Skills — held every two years at different venues.
• Coupe d’Europe — held every year in Nantes, France or another international venue.
• Coupe du Monde de La Boulangerie / Patisserie — held biennially in Paris/Lyon, France.
• Coupe du Monde de la Chocolatine, or Chocolatine World Cup — held in Toulouse, France biennially.
• Bread in the City – Rimini, Italy — held annually.
• The Ambassadeurs du Pain — held every two years.
• The African Bakery Cup — held every two years, to select candidates for the CDM.
• The IBA Cup –held every three years in Munich and, in 2025 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
• The City Bread Cup, Taipei Taiwan — held every two years, and will possibly become an annual event.
• Asian Pastry Cup — held now on an annual basis in China or other Asian countries such as Singapore.
• The UIBC Young Bakers Cup — held at various international events worldwide.
• Best Croissant competitions – held in San Francisco, New York etc….
• Nordic Bakery Cup — held every two years

While I have provided a comprehensive list, above, there are also many more in South America, Australia and other continents. Most offer the honor of becoming world champions, and some offer small cash prizes. In March 2025, prizes for the City Bread Championships included USD $10,000 for first; USD $6000 for second and USD $3000 for third place. It was also the biggest competition I ever judged, with five fully equipped kitchens and 15 countries competing for the prize money. More and more frequently, these competitions include savory elements, designed to embrace the tremendous growth of the global snacking marketplace. In Asia, the creativity of baked goods is stunning, blending colorful and exotically-flavored fillings with local fruits and is creating an entirely new exciting hybrid concept, merging pastry and viennoiserie to a whole new level and consumer offering.

To conclude, I have witnessed the evolution of competition-arena-based products going mainstream and becoming global products in a little more than ten years. None of this would have occurred but for the beloved creation of the Bicolor Croissant by David Bedu. His vision has inspired millions of artisan and commercial producers to take his creation to the next level, with vibrant colors, subtle textures, fillings and, most of all, eye appeal. In Europe, teachers such as Yohan Ferrand and Brian Boclet, are fuelling the desire of artisans to learn, to create and innovate; long may it continue. It will be really interesting to see the next big trends as they emerge, and I, for one, am really excited for this sector’s future.

Photos by Jimmy Griffin

(This article appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)