For an aerospace engineer, Kate Reid makes excellent croissants – so much so that The New York Times recently declared Lune Croissanterie's "holy balance of buttery heft and feathery flake" worth a trip across the dateline. Queues form outside the warehouse bakery in Melbourne's Fitzroy hours before the croissants hit the oven, and $50 tickets for the small, dedicated Lune Lab croissant degustation sell within two minutes of going online.

"I knew from the start that if I could nail the croissant pastry, then there was an almost limitless amount of things I could do with it," says Reid, who swapped a career with Formula One for a brief but inspiring apprenticeship with celebrated baker Christophe Vasseur​ of Paris boulangerie Du Pain et Des Idées in 2012.