Kate and her daughter took a macaron class and Kate wrote this post after asking our founder Lisa a few questions. Thanks for visiting!
Toronto’s Premier Culinary School -Article for The Villager Newspaper, New York
For over 15 years, Le Dolci Bakery has been offering a wide variety of highly-rated pastry and baking classes, and is considered Toronto’s premier culinary School. Located in the up-and-coming West End of Toronto’s Junction District, Le Dolci’s fully equipped culinary school welcomes kids, families, couples, friends and corporate teams for cooking classes, birthday parties, team building and more.
Owner and founder Lisa Sanguedolce was inspired to open Le Dolci after taking a class in Greenwich, South West London, England. “I attended a cupcake making class in a woman’s home,” recalls Lisa. “I had no expectations except to learn something new, and I floated out of there totally hooked. She had her poodle running around with French bistro music playing and for two hours I sat there and totally switched off and focused only on making beautiful edible works of art.” After that, Lisa set out to host her own classes in the North West of London at her friend Clara’s cafe in Notting Hill. She invited all her friends and co-workers to join and voila, Le Dolci was born!
The name, Le Dolci, was originally intended to be an interior design firm Lisa had planned to open with her two best gay friends. “They both ended up falling in love and getting married,” explains Lisa. “The project got sidelined and I kept the name. My friend Paolo, who was part of the original trio, has been a design and style guru for the business; he art directs me yearly from his home in London, UK. He assisted in our upstairs reno last year and everyone loves it, including me!”
Le Dolci started out as a culinary classroom in 2011with one class and a very big space. The company then extended to over 15 classes with a team of amazing pastry chefs at their first location at the top of Toronto’s trendy Trinity Bellwoods Park. “After a while, people walked in and asked if they could buy cakes and I said “YES” and from there we started selling cakes,” explains Lisa. This led into a wedding cake business, creating cakes for celebrities and a full-on wholesale cake business. Le Dolci sold cakes to over 55 grocery stores across Southern Ontario, including a mall outpost. With 3 busy locations: one for the school, a factory for the cake production and a mall location, each location was filled with a great team of cake makers and pastry chef instructors.
Unfortunately, during the pandemic, Le Dolci was forced to sell their cake division, and since has been solely a culinary school. “It has come full circle,” describes Lisa. “We are back to our roots, as we originally started as a culinary school.”
Currently, Le Dolci offers a wide variety of beginner level and intermediate baking classes at their location at 12 Sousa Mendes Street in the West End, Junction neighbourhood of Toronto. Beginner classes include: intro to cake decorating, intro to bread (challah), doughnut class, homestyle cinnamon buns, stuffed gnocchi pasta party, apple pie class, chocolate masterclass, five day Parisian Masterclass and five day cake baking and decorating masterclass.
Intermediate Baker Classes include: buttercream flower cake decorating class, Lambeth buttercream masterclass, churros and crullers, croissant class and chocolate masterclass level 2.
Le Dolci employs 15 charismatic and experienced instructors. Lisa’s favourite thing about running the business is meeting new people. “I love meeting all the amazing people from our city and around the world who join our classes. Everyone comes in and says they can’t bake or aren’t creative and leave having been so creative, making something wonderful and delicious. Almost everyone surprises themselves in class, and that’s special.”
For more information and full class schedule, visit ledolci.com and follow @ledolci on social media, email classroom@ledolci.com.
