The smell of warm bread hangs in the air at one of Benoit Castel's patisseries in Paris, where the newly crowned world's best pastry chef was hard at work testing new recipes. His fingers covered in cookie dough, the 54-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair had returned to his usual routine as an "artisan-retailer" after the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners (UIBC) named him World Confectioner of the Year last month. "I have a mission: to be the world champion every day in my shop for my customers," he said, eyes twinkling. At the helm of several establishments in Paris, Castel has never strayed from his motto: "It's all about the product." Watch moreWorld’s best pastry chef Nina Métayer: ‘We Need Cake!’ Three years after fellow French pastry chef Nina Metayer was crowned champion, Castel received the UIBC award presented annually to a leading figure in the profession in recognition of their career and contribution to the trade on July 14 in Singapore. "Our work is no trivial matter, every day we make things that people put into their bodies," said Castel, who hails from Brittany in western France. The pastry shop's glass cases are arrayed with blueberry and raspberry tartlets, cherry clafoutis and vanilla flans, but his best-seller is a chocolate choux pastry. "If we stopped making it, there'd be protests," he said. Each of his pastries is decorated with a small, scalloped shortbread biscuit -- a nod to his home region -- whereas colouring or bits of gold or silver leaf are eschewed. Fruit and vegetables are delivered to the chef from his own vegetable gardens and orchards in Brittany. The grandson of farmers, he grew up watching his grandparents make their own butter. "My mother and my grandmother cook divinely well," he said. From the age of seven, he wanted to become a chef and received his first recipe book. But it was watching a pastry chef spin a model of the famed Loire valley Chateau de Chambord out of sugar while out to dinner three years later that set him firmly on the path of pastry-making. 'Try new things'