Cooking with Louis Remolde - Fitness Instructor and Instagram Influencer

AS LOUIS REMOLDE, a longtime restaurant industry pro, approached age 40 he started asking himself some big questions. “I wanted to change my life. I didn’t love the way I was looking or feeling, so I decided to give up alcohol,” he recalls.

It was a major change that took his life in unexpected directions. When you stop drinking, it can open up a lot of free time. “I didn’t want to sit around, all blah, blah, blah … woe is me,” says Remolde. “I would rather be doing something else.”

What he did instead was start baking. “It was a huge help early in sobriety. It kept me occupied,” he says. He had learned some things by osmosis, working front-of-the-house at restaurants like Matyson, famous for its incredible desserts, but mostly he was self-taught.

He was also intent on getting healthy, so he liked being able to control the ingredients in what he was eating. In 2015, the year after he got sober, he also got serious about exercise, becoming a fitness instructor. Today, his two popular Instagram accounts chronicle his twin passions: @thesinglebaker shows off his culinary creations and @louis4ever features his workouts.

Remolde loves cookbooks but draws on them more for inspiration than specific recipes. One of his favorites is Hand Made Baking: Recipes to Warm the Heart (Chronicle Books, 2014) by Kamran Siddiqi. “These brownies are just the way I like them--fudgy but still with a good brownie texture. The secret is the cold eggs,” he says.