Baking is a food processing operation that transforms flour blended in a culinary process with other ingredients like fruit preserves, sugars and creams, nuts and meats into breads, pastries, bagels, tarts, cakes and other flour-based baked products. Bakers are employed in both small and large food processing and food service businesses. Many are employed in hotels and restaurants, airline caterers, groceries and specialty bakeshops and coffee shops.
The Pastry Chef
The head of any bakeshop is a culinary professional called the Pastry Chef. He is trained in the culinary art of baking, sculpting sugars, concocting deserts and pastry creations, manipulating chocolates and is generally a kitchen manager who supervises other bakers and staff. He also ensures that all ingredients and kitchen supplies are available at all times.
The Cake Baker/Decorator
As culinary professional specializing in designing, baking and decorating cakes, the Cake Baker/Decorator produces cakes for various occasions like weddings, birthdays, and corporate events. In a large bakeshop, they are answerable to the pasty chef but are rarely unsupervised in the baking operations as they are expected to know about measuring and blending ingredients to make dough, batter, icings and fillings as well as kneading, rolling and cutting dough in cookies, tarts, pie crusts, etc. They are also trained to know the required oven temperatures and baking duration, using the right pans and molds as well as decorate cakes.
Where They Work
Bakers in large baking companies produce large quantities of breads, muffins and other baked products from large missing machines and ovens. Most bakers own their bakeries either as having been part of a family generation of bakers or leave large bake shops to form their own. Many who work in large bakeries with established reputation, often learns all they need on the job to form their own bakeries. While other find fulfillment working in airline catering department as well as hotels and restaurants.