Careers As a Baker or Pastry Chef
If you seek a career as a baker or pastry chef, chances are excellent that you have considered attending culinary school. Although the restaurant industry values experience and ability more than degrees, the schooling required to attain a baking and pastry degree can prove beneficial in honing the exacting techniques needed to succeed. Weigh the expenses of school against your personal situation before deciding whether or not to attend school. In any case, apprenticeship in your chosen baking or pastry specialty likely will be required.
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Baker
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Baking professionally covers a wide range of skills and specialties. You may specialize in bread, cakes, doughnuts, muffins or some other specific range of baked goods. Your career might also include an apprenticeship under a head baker, baking in a variety of kitchens, and opening your own bakery to enact your particular baking vision. As a baker, you must memorize basic formulas and ratios as applied to the science of baking and be able to adapt them to suit your needs. If you work under someone else in a kitchen, you must follow the recipes and techniques that kitchen uses. When you are in charge of a kitchen, you are responsible for coming up with recipes for your baked goods that set your bakery apart from the competition in your niche and/or geographic area.
Pastry Chef
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The title of pastry chef can cover a broad skill repertoire as well. Typically, pastry chefs execute more elaborate techniques than bakers. French-style pastries, filled buns, elaborate cookies, candies and sugar sculpture showpieces are some of the items a pastry chef might create during the regular course of a day. As with baking, different kitchens employing pastry chefs might have different specialties. As a pastry chef, mastery of technique as well as an ability to memorize and follow recipes exactly is required. Creativity is encouraged in execution, particularly in terms of creating stunning visuals that make people want to eat what you have created.
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Chocolatier
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The ability to create, execute and work with fine chocolates is another subset of baking and pastry chef careers. Chocolate, like general baking and pastry, requires specific knowledge. It is an unforgiving medium but can be beautiful and delicious when executed well. Chocolates and edible chocolate showpieces are the daily concerns of a chocolatier. Time, temperature and humidity levels play a very important role in the successful execution of chocolatiering. Because the art of chocolate making requires such exact skills, apprenticeship with a chocolatier is the most likely route to get the expertise you need to succeed in this specialty.
Candy Maker
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Candy makers might work with chocolate, but master and exercise general skills with candy-making both for consumption and for show. Toffees, caramels, lollipops, bark, candied dried fruit and fruit peels and sugar sculpture are some of the skills required as a candy maker. As with other branches of the baking and pastry arts, an ability to memorize and follow specific formulas is required. Candy-making, like the art of being a chocolatier, requires exacting attention to time, temperature and humidity levels. As a candy maker, the most helpful thing you can do to further your career is to apprentice under a master candy maker whose work you particularly admire.
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References
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