Livermore Falls woman’s love of cooking spurs her on

LIVERMORE FALLS — Linda Chretien loves to cook.

“My son, Luc, inspired me,” she said. “He started taking culinary arts when he was in high school, and I said, ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’”

Her mother was a great cook as well, she said.

Chretien turned her dining room into a commercial kitchen and named it Chretien’s Kitchen. She lives at 7 Page Road off Campground Road.

She makes pastries and sells custom orders. She sells between 48 and 100 pastries a week to Riverside Kwik Stop in Jay.

Chretien, 55, also works 22½ hours in food service at Livermore Elementary School. She loves that job, too, especially working with children.

After work, she goes home and starts baking Bismarcks, crème horns, whoopie pies and more.

She also makes raisin bread and white bread.

On this day, she checked a batch of vanilla whoopie pie batter in her mixer. The consistency wasn’t quite right, she said, and added more ingredients.

After it was cooked, she planned to fill it with raspberry filling and put raspberry and coconut on top.

She had already made a chocolate sheet cake that sat on the counter with plastic over it. She had plans for it.

She tweaks recipes to make them her way.

“It’s a natural thing. I just didn’t know I could do it. I just didn’t have the confidence,” she said of baking commercially.

She took the crème horn shells she had baked ahead and squeezed the filling from her pastry bag into the 6- to 7-inch shells.

Next, she filled puff pastries. Then she moved on to the Bismarcks while chocolate chip whoopie pies baked in her double-convection oven. She filled the Bismarcks with an array of fillings, including lemon and raspberry and added some cream to them.

One of the things she likes best about baking is just hearing people say they cannot do it, but they are glad she can, Chretien said. That people enjoy her baked goods keeps her going, she said.

“I used to bring pastries to school, and the girls would say, ‘Open a bakery,’” she said. “They encouraged me.”

She loves trying new recipes and experimenting with her own recipes.

“Cooking makes me smile,” she said.

dperry@sunjournal.com

: Linda Chretien adds some cream to Bismarcks filled with strawberry, raspberry and lemon. Chretien owns Chretien’s Kitchens in Livermore Falls and makes pastries, breads and other goods.

: Linda Chretien of Livermore Falls checks her vanilla whoopie pie batter in her commercial kitchen. She owns Chretien’s Kitchen on Page Road and makes a variety of pastries and breads.

: Linda Chretien owner of Chretien’s Kitchen in Livermore Falls puts scoops of whoopie pie batter on to a cookie sheet in her home commercial kitchen.

: Linda Chretien squeezes cream from a pastry bag into a creme horn shell at her bakery, Chretien’s Kitchen in Livermore Falls.

: A sheet of uncooked whoopie pies wait to be baked at Chretien’s Kitchen in Livermore Falls.