Baking and Pastry School: Tips and Tricks for Success
If you’re considering formal education in the baking and pastry arts, you might be a little nervous. After all, this is going to take your baking to the next level and provide you with a diploma to help you on your path toward your culinary dreams. Here are some tips and tricks for how to confidently walk into your first class and remain determined throughout your education.
Prepare Yourself: You’re Starting a Demanding Program
Anyone who tells you that baking and pastry arts school is a simple program you will breeze through without so much as breaking a sweat has clearly never earned a culinary arts diploma. While you will definitely spend some time icing cupcakes and arranging displays of delectables for faculty chefs to grade, you will also spend time in a classroom, learning about food science, and some of your bakes will probably be on tight time limits.
To help prepare you, learn as much as you can about the school you want to attend. Take a tour, if possible, Google the establishment to see what graduates and the community has to say about it, and pay attention to whether or not the school provides accelerated courses or traditional ones. This will have a huge impact on how long it takes for you to graduate. Accelerated courses are always going to be faster and give graduates more time to put a portfolio together and begin looking for work.
The Right Attitude Will Help You Through Baking and Pastry School
If you’ve been away from school for a while or perhaps didn’t have a great experience at the last school you went to, it might be difficult to get yourself back into the mind of a student. Good habits and soft skills can carry you far in any line of business. Here are some pointers to help you be successful in baking and pastry arts school.
- Listen and follow directions: You might be used to baking a different way, but when an instructor shows you a new method, be sure to pay attention and follow along.
- Ask questions: If you don’t understand what the instructor is saying, waiting until you’ve made a mess and produced a dessert that’s inedible is not going to help you.
- Learn from your mistakes: When it comes time for criticism everyone wants to hear they’ve done well. But if you haven’t, listen to why your faculty chefs think so and what you can do to improve.
- Stay dedicated to your goal: It’s easy to arrive the first day with determination to earn your diploma. But there are many difficult days ahead and keeping up your level of enthusiasm can be difficult. Keep pressing on!
- Communicate clearly: When you’re in the kitchen you sometimes have seconds to tell a classmate how to help you or what the next step is. Make sure you are precise and concise to cut down on miscommunication.
Think of other skills you can use in the kitchen that will benefit you in your professional life after school. How can you start working on these soft skills while still in culinary school?
Learn the Rules Before you Break Them
Pablo Picasso once said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” The Cubist painter had an excellent point. Imagine trying to bake a 4-tiered fantasy wedding cake before you know how to bake a basic birthday cake. If you’re going to invent culinary delights the world has never seen, you need to know what the rules of baking are before you start to bend and break them.
Careful attention to technique and food science can help you push your baking to the limits and see what new dessert combinations you can devise on your own. That all starts with learning what the technique is first.
Are you passionate about baking and pastry arts? Are you interested in earning a Diploma in Baking and Pastry Arts to take your career to the next level? If you’d like to learn more about ECPI University’s Culinary Institute of Virginia, connect with a friendly admissions advisor today to discuss your future.
It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!
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