Should I Consider a Career as a Baker?

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A career as a baker is a perfect choice for anyone with a love for creativity and a passion for creating tasty desserts. Unlike bakers of the past, today’s bakers and pastry chefs spend their entire careers working on new and innovative ways to elevate desserts. Baking is no longer about simply throwing together a cake or pie as an afterthought for the main course. To have a successful career as a baker in the current culinary world, it is important that a potential baker has a strong desire to make dessert the best course of any dining experience.

Skills Needed

To have a career as a baker, it is important to have an eye for detail and a passion for creating unique, tasty baked goods. Bakers have to be precise in measurements, timing, and baking temperatures. Baking is a science and bakers are culinary scientists in a sense. For that reason, anyone thinking of choosing a career as a baker should be creative, but analytical at the same time.

Salary and Job Outlook

The median annual salary for a baker is roughly $27,000, according to Payscale.com. While bakers rarely earn the same kind of salary as an executive or sous chef, the job outlook for bakers is still quite good at an expected increase of 2% through the year 2020. Baking is a specialty area in the culinary arts field and requires a certain kind of person to be successful. Because of that, bakers will always be in demand and the need for more bakers will continue to grow.

Job Duties and Work Environment

The job duties of a baker include things like decorating cakes and cupcakes, precisely measuring ingredients for baking, ordering supplies, managing inventory, mentoring staff, recipe creation and improvement, and researching the latest baking trends. Baking as a career is about precision, but that doesn’t mean there is only one path a baker may take. Bakers work in a variety of environments including private bakeries, large baking companies, restaurants, hotels, and as caterers.

Summary

Why work as a baker when the culinary world is mainly focused on the success of executive chefs? The answer to that question is a personal one. Bakers are passionate about baking and can’t imagine working in any other culinary area. While executive chefs run an entire kitchen brigade and have to focus on several different types of cuisine, a baker has the luxury of simply focusing on baking.

While working as a baker may not be as lucrative as other chef positions, there is still a lot to be said for baking as a career. One of the biggest advantages to choosing a career as a baker over that of a culinary chef is the time needed to become successful. Culinary chefs must dedicate years of long hours and low pay in order to obtain the position of executive chef.

This isn’t the case for bakers. A successful baking career can take off almost instantly for a person with the right mixture of personality traits and dedication.

Bakers are artists with a touch of the mad scientist thrown in for good measure. A career as a baker allows for creativity, but is based on structure and precision. For those who want a good balance of both, working as a baker is the perfect choice.