If you have a passion and enjoy baking, you should consider a career where you put your baking skills to work. There are many exciting and diverse paths you can take upon completing the appropriate training. Here are some of the opportunities for pursuing a career you will love in pastry and baking.
Baker
Bakers are trained to understand how to scale, mix and bake recipes properly for consistently excellent results. Bakers work in a variety of environments such as artisanal bakeries, doughnut, bagel and cookie shops, restaurants, supermarkets, catering companies and product manufacturers. Bakers may start out as assistants, but can advance and over time, if desired, become a master of their art and open their own bake shop.
Pastry Chef
If you primarily love the sweet side to baking, you may want to consider becoming a pastry chef. Pastry chefs specialize in desserts and confections, such as pastries, pies and cakes, and work to ensure they look as good as they taste. A pastry chef often manages a team who makes desserts, and is responsible for quality, consistency, and high standards in fine dining restaurants, bistros, hotels and resorts.
Chocolatier
A chocolatier is both a confectioner and an artist who uses chocolate as the key ingredient in creating candies and desserts that are not only delicious but visually stunning. Chocolatiers must master skills in molding, tempering, sculpting, and more and understand how to make and work with the finest chocolates.
Cake Designer/Decorator
Thanks to the Food Network, cake decorating has taken on celebrity-level status, as competitive cake-themed shows grow in popularity. Cake decorators, whether baking simple birthday cakes for a grocery store or making elaborate wedding cakes, must be skilled in not only baking cakes, but assembling them, shaping them, and using frosting techniques like piping and sculpting to create the desired look.
Research and Development/New Product Development
Businesses that manufacture kitchen equipment, ingredients, gadgets, etc. need to prove their products work to build consumer confidence. For that reason, bakers often work behind the scenes in research and development, testing how to best prepare desserts and foods in a new convection oven, for example, or how to alter recipes when using gluten free flour for the best results. They may also help food brands create and introduce new products into the marketplace.
If any of these career paths appeal to you, Park City Culinary Institute can help prepare you for a fabulous future in the art of cooking and baking. Check out our Pastry and Baking Program, which, in 5 to 8 weeks, can have you confidently baking bread, tarts, eclairs, croissants, French Macarons and more! To learn about our award-winning culinary institute and how you can enroll, contact us today.