How Lune Croissants saved pastry chef Kate Reid’s life

When Kate Reid was 13, and the Grand Prix famously moved from Adelaide to Melbourne, her F1 obsessed father took Kate and her brother Cam to the “Free Friday” practice day. No-one could have guessed the impact it would have on her.

As Kate stood spellbound listening to the sound of the cars coming out on the track for the first time, feeling the vibrations reverberating around her, she knew her life was changed forever.

From that day forward, with unwavering tunnel vision, everything she worked towards at school was to land a job in F1 Racing. For Kate, it was never about the glitz and glamour of F1 that we see romanticised on TV and Films these days . . . she was attracted to the technical precision and excellence of the design of the cars.

She excelled attending RMIT in Aerospace Engineering before her hard work paid off in spades, as she landed what she thought was her dream job at Williams Racing.

She moved to the other side of the world where she was the only female out of roughly 120 people in Aerospace Engineering and Technical team — there was no female toilet. She worked around the clock in an extremely high pressure and incredibly isolated situation and says she constantly expendable due to the sheer number of people vying to work there, despite the pitiful wages. Soon her dream career had lost its shine. Twelve months after moving to another racing team she described as toxic and unsupportive, Kate was depressed and homesick.

Having been a perfectionist her entire life and in a terribly poor mental state, Kate soon turned her hyper-focus towards what she was eating. It wasn’t long before she was in the grip of one of the most complex mental health conditions — Anorexia Nervosa. Whilst everyone’s experience with an eating disorder is different, Kate says that for her “It wasn’t even so much about the food. It was all about control. With everything else around me, seemingly falling apart, the one thing I could control was what I put into my body, and I very quickly became obsessed.”

Her road to recovery wasn’t easy or linear. It took a long time, and to this day she still has to continue to work on it, but during the course of that initial recovery, she discovered another passion for her super sharp mind . . . Baking.

She first began baking to help her wind down from long days at work, and there was the added attraction of sharing her food with her peers. It gave her great joy to watch people enjoy her creations. She felt she could experience the sensation of eating without actually having to physically do it herself.

But to be a great baker, you have to approach it like it’s a science experiment. You can’t add an extra bit of baking soda, butter or flour without having in most cases, a disastrous result. This appealed enormously to Kate’s eternal chase for perfection.

Initially, she started baking biscuits and tarts for Melbourne cafes before a month-long internship at a boulangerie in Paris narrowed her focus.

After returning home, she decided that she wanted to bake just one thing — but do it exceptionally well — croissants. Three months of trial and error in her home kitchen and she was finally happy with the result, and the “Lune Croissant” was born.

Before long she opened her first store at a hole in the wall in Elwood, before she was joined in the business by her brother Cameron. They now run seven stores nationally with a few international opportunities on the horizon.

In 2016 the New York Times Food Critic Oliver Strand declared Lune Croissants, “May be the finest you will find anywhere in the world.”

People queue for hours for her sweet and savoury creations that each take three days to “incubate” and are served 10 minutes after being taken out of the oven.

You can even sit at the Lune Lab in her signature store in Fitzroy and enjoy a multi-course croissant degustation whilst you watch her bakers hand cut, stretch and roll their croissants in a temperature and climate controlled cube’, complete with futuristic lighting.

These days, Kate is comfortable sharing her full story — not just the incredible rise and dominance of her baking empire, but of all the challenges and struggles she encountered along the way to achieve that success, and later this year she will release her autobiography.

Its not a leap to say that baking saved Kate Reid’s life. . . . so, the next time you take a bite out one of her flaky, buttery, mouth wateringly perfect pastries – I hope you reflect on this extraordinary woman’s journey to create it.

If reading parts of Kate’s story has caused you distress, please don’t hesitate to seek help through the Butterfly Foundation – butterfly.org.au or Beyond Blue beyondblue.org.au

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