Professors of the Advanced Studies in Gastronomy 2

On ste souvient (peut-être) que j'ai décidé de mettre en valeur les enseignants de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes du Goût, de la Gastronomie et des Arts de la Table
Last week, I presented  Sylvie Lortal. Now I have the pleasure to tell you that our educational program includes courses by  Jean-Philippe de Tonnac.


Jean-Philippe de Tonnac is an essayist, editor and journalist. He was in charge of special editions for the Nouvel Observateur magazine for almost 10 years, and has published about twenty books. Today he works as an editor and continues his own research. His investigation into bread and its symbolism began by obtaining a diploma in baking (2007) after a training course at l’Ecole de Boulangerie et Pâtisserie de Paris, a tour of the ‘bread-eating’ Mediterranean countries (Egypt, Greece, Italy, etc.), and discussions with representatives of the wheat to-flour and bread industry.

In 2007, he took the lead in a Universal dictionary of bread project aiming to collect all the entries that bread has generated since its appearance on the edge of the eastern Mediterranean area in the late Neolithic period (from agronomy to theology including genetics, botany, anthropology, history, milling, bakery, economics, arts, and more).
He has since co-written Le Larousse du pain (2013) et L'Ami intime - Un musée imaginaire du Pain (2014)


Jean-Philippe de Tonnac est essayiste, éditeur et journaliste. Il a animé pendant près de dix ans les "Hors série" du Nouvel Observateur et publié une vingtaine d’ouvrages.
Il est aujourd’hui éditeur et poursuit ses propres recherches.
Son enquête sur le pain et sa symbolique a commencé par l’obtention d’un CAP de boulanger (2007) après une formation à l’Ecole de Boulangerie et Pâtisserie de Paris, des séjours en Méditerranée dans quelques-uns des pays de « mangeurs de pains » (Egypte, Grèce, Italie, etc.), et la rencontre et des échanges avec quelques-uns des représentants de la filière blé-farine-pain.
Il a pris en 2007 la direction d’un Dictionnaire universel du pain avec l’ambition de rassembler toutes les gloses que le pain a générées depuis son apparition sur le pourtour oriental de la Méditerranée à la fin du Néolithique (de l’agronomie à la théologie en passant par la génétique, la botanique, l’anthropologie, l’histoire, la meunerie, la boulangerie, l’économie, les arts, etc.).
Depuis, il a notamment co-rédigé Le Larousse du pain (2013) et L'Ami intime - Un musée imaginaire du Pain (2014)

Professors of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Gastronomy

 Do you know the Institute for Advanced Studies in Gastronomy ? This is a unique university programme about food, with no equivalent in the world !

The professors are chosen among the best in France in the field of food research. And this explains why, after more than ten years  of activity, our Institute is so successful, with participants from all over the world.

Now, I decided to present some professors (one per week). Today :




Sylvie Lortal is senior scientist at Inra. For 25 years, she has been having fundamental and applied research on the mechanisms of cheese ripening, on the in situ activity of micro-organisms and their  enzymes, and on the  biodiversity of technological properties of lactic and propionic bacteria. For her work, she was awarded  the Award de l’American Dairy Science Association in 2011.
For 8 years, she was the director of the  UMR Science et Technologie du Lait et de l’œuf of Inra in  Rennes, france (https://www6.rennes.inra.fr/stlo)  and co-editor of the Oxford Companion to cheese (2016-Oxford univ. press), a unique encyclopedia about cheese. With a passion for fermented food, their particular place in human food, and for  the biodiversity of microbial ecosystems, she created in  2006 a Centre de Ressources Biologiques « Bactéries d’intérêt alimentaire » (CIRM-BIA), collection of micro-organisms certified  ISO 9001 (4000 product) – member of the national network  Biobanque, CRB, of which she is now a scientific adviser.
Again in the field of microbial databank, she was the coordinator for Inra of the European Project of  Infrastructure EMbaRC (FP7 – 2009-2012).
Today, she has a mission for the Department Microbiologie et Chaine alimentaire of Inra. She is intended to create a European network managing a collective reflection on the place and the nutritional benefits of fermented food in the European diet. Also she is doing research on biofilms lying on the traditional tools used for cheese making