Years ago, there was a television commercial where a guy would pop out of bed at 4 a.m. saying, “Time to make the doughnuts.” The commercial was for a chain of American doughnut shops, but the sentiment could be appreciated by all pastry chefs.
Pastry chef jobs are not for people who like to party all night and sleep all day. This is definitely a job for a morning person.
Besides molding, shaping, and sweetening ingredients into soft mounds of chewy goodness, pastry chefs perform a number of other functions including:
Ø Supervising staff
Ø Ordering restaurant and cooking supplies
Ø Costing supplies
Ø Menu planning (depending on where the pastry chef works)
A professional pastry chef might provide local restaurants, grocery stores, or neighborhood bakeries with their creations. Or, a professional pastry chef might have his or her own business to run. There’s something about the term “pastry chef” that makes it sound easy or frivolous. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pastry chefs are like the athletes of the cooking world. They’re up long hours, on their feet, working in hot, pressure-cooker environments sometimes, must focus on fine details, and manage to pull the whole thing off day after day. The next time you’re enjoying a delicious puff pastry, think about the long hours and hard that went into making it.
