12 Reasons to Invest in a Degree in Baking & Pastry Arts
Getting into the baking and pastry arts is a decision you won’t soon regret! After all, baking is a profession with plenty of flexibility, creativity, and some tasty perks. If you think life as a baker sounds pretty sweet, stick around to learn more about its many benefits.
Flexible Schedules
Since most restaurants and bakeries do business all day long, and many operate 24/7, they have to have bakers on the job at all hours. This can allow you to schedule your shifts in whatever way you find most convenient. If you'd prefer to do an entire week's worth of work in two days, and spend the rest of the week relaxing, you may have the freedom to do so.
Healthy Aromas
Don't underestimate the value of a job that immerses you in good smells. It's not just a pleasurable experience; there are some who believe that regular exposure to good smells reduces chronic pain, helps you sleep better, keeps your blood sugar under control, and leads to weight loss (so long as you don’t eat too much of your own work!). This is particularly true if the pastries you bake contain lavender, rosemary, or fruit. Maybe it's all the love being baked right in!
Working Out at Work
If physical fitness is important to you, baking can help keep you in shape. Bakers have to lift and move around heavy sacks of flour and other ingredients, all the while working next to a hot oven. This is an exercise in endurance, and you may end up stronger and fitter as a result of it.
Concrete Feedback
Baking is the rare field in which your labors have immediate, concrete results. Every time a customer enters your shop to enjoy the smell or marvel at the pastry designs, you'll know you've done a good job. This also makes it easy to know how to improve your work. By keeping track of the pastries that your customers buy most often, as well as the ones they ignore, you'll know what you do well and what you need to work on.
Prepare to Own a Business
If restaurant baking doesn't fulfill your ambitions, why not open a restaurant or bakery of your own? Even entry-level baking can prepare you to own a food service business. Working as a baker can give you direct experience managing supplies, dealing with customers, and enforcing hygiene standards. Combine this experience with the ability to manage money and you'll have a solid set of skills to run a business yourself.
Hands-On Mentoring
If you have a passion for teaching but don't see yourself in the classroom, you may have an opportunity to teach as a baker—especially if you take the entrepreneurship route. Training new bakers is a hands-on experience, in which you'll have the opportunity to closely mentor new hires, showing them the secrets of the pastry arts.
Open Potluck Invitations
Once your friends realize you're a baker, you're guaranteed an invitation to all their potlucks, picnics, and dinner parties. However well or not-so-well you may know someone, they'll want you at their party providing something good to eat. Of course, this also means that you'll have to work before each party, but if you truly love making pastries, that shouldn't be an obstacle.
Business and Pleasure
Those potlucks won't just be a time to relax with your friends -- they'll also serve as a valuable proving ground for new recipes! As a baker, enjoying your food and investing in your work will be inseparable. Every time you cook, you'll be testing new ideas; every time you eat at a restaurant or bakery, you'll be gathering data on the competition.
Looking to start as a baker?
ECPI University's College of Culinary Arts, Culinary Institute of Virginia, offers a Baking and Pastry Arts Program that can give you the skills you need to embark on a successful life as a baker!
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