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Bakery, restaurant & wedding cakes
Pastry Chef
Precision cooking, and the hours are somehow worse.
Typical pay
$38k-$75k
How you get in
Culinary or pastry program, or years on the bench
Outlook
Steady; custom cake and specialty work pays best
Pastry chefs create desserts, breads and confections for restaurants, hotels and bakeries. It is the most technical and least forgiving kitchen discipline — pastry is chemistry with deadlines.
A day in the life
- 4:00aIn early, laminate dough and start the ovens
- 6:30aBake off and finish breakfast pastry
- 9:00aPlated dessert components for service
- 12:00pLunch and inventory
- 1:00pCake decoration and special orders
- 4:00pPrep tomorrow, clean, cost out a new menu item
How to get in
Pastry program
Duration
9-24 months
Cost
$15,000-$50,000
Credential
Baking and pastry certificate or degree
- Complete a pastry arts program with an externship
- Learn lamination, chocolate, sugar work and plated desserts
- Use the externship to enter a hotel or restaurant pastry team
- Expect to start as a commis and work up
Kitchen bench upward
Duration
3-6 years
Cost
$0 — paid
Credential
None — the work speaks
- Start on the pastry station in a restaurant or hotel
- Learn the fundamentals through repetition
- Move to pastry sous, then pastry chef
- No school required if you find a chef willing to teach
Custom cake business
Duration
1-3 years
Cost
$5,000-$40,000
Credential
Food handler certification; cottage food or commercial kitchen
- Build decorating skill and a portfolio of finished work
- Check your state's cottage food laws for home-based selling
- Market weddings and celebrations through social media
- Custom cakes carry the highest margins in the entire pastry field
What people love
- · Highly technical, genuinely creative craft
- · Wedding and custom cakes carry excellent margins
- · Hotels and restaurants both need pastry
- · Home bakery businesses are achievable
What wears people down
- · Pre-dawn starts even by kitchen standards
- · Precision leaves no room for improvisation
- · Pay lags the skill required
- · Holidays and wedding season are relentless