The smell of warm bread hangs in the air at one of Benoît Castel's patisseries in Paris, where the newly crowned world's best pastry chef was hard at work testing new recipes.

For the world's newly crowned best pastry chef Frenchman Benoit Castel, pastry is less a matter of following recipes than listening to ingredients. In one of his many patisserie…

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.