Outside US & Canada?
The Tastiest Job in the World: Pastry Chef
By Austin BrentleyOn an episode of The Gilmore Girls, Lorelai has broken up with Luke and her best friend Sookie, who is a chef, is trying to cheer her up--with pastry. Which isn't at all a bad way to go about it.
Sookie is the lead chef at the Dragonfly Inn, but it's usually pastry chefs who create exquisite cream puffs, eclairs and delicate choux pastry swans seen at special events. Break down the ingredients--butter, water, salt, flour, eggs--and it sounds simple. It's not. It takes a professional pastry chef to make these ingredients come together into heavenly pastries. Pastry chefs work for restaurants, hotels, and catering companies. It's their job to bring the perfect final touch to beautiful dinners.
Pastry chef schools offer comprehensive programs to prepare potential chefs for careers in fine restaurants. Students learn from master chefs while training in fully-equipped commercial kitchens. Programs vary in length from a few months to two years.
A Pastry Chef Must be Part Artist and Part Scientist and Part Diplomat
The job of a pastry chef combines a number of talents. It's both an art and a science, requiring technical knowledge of how ingredients come together and how applying heat changes the properties of the ingredients. The artistic side comes into play with presentation--desserts need to look as beautiful as they taste. You can learn these skills; you just need to find a good pastry chef school.
In addition to baking, pastry chefs can work with other departments within hotels or restaurants, and oversee kitchen staff and kitchen inventory. They consult with clients who are booking facilities for special events and they constantly strive to be the "wow" in the wow factor for those events.
What do Pastry Chefs Do?
Pastry chef job responsibilities can include a range of duties depending on experience and status in the kitchen. A lead pastry chef, for example, might be responsible for:
- Preparing specialty baked goods for in-house and catered events
- Analyzing food costs and determining cost-effective way to prepare quality items
- Maintaining food production records
- Directing maintenance of the commercial kitchen
- Supervising kitchen inventory needs
- Providing training and supervision for senior bakers and support staff
According to salary.com, pastry chef salaries run between $35,000 to $40,000 annually, depending on years of experience and where you work. With a degree, you can be competitive in this creative and tasty industry.
Sources
The French Culinary Institute Pastry Chef School
University of New Mexico Job Descriptions
Salary.com Pastry Chef Casino
About the AuthorA freelance writer and researcher, Austin Brentley currently lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand. His previous experience includes working for a lobbying firm in his native Washington, DC, teaching English in Japan, and working for various record and television studios in New York.
