With the explosion of reality TV, pastry chefs who specialize in creating baked goods, pastries, desserts and breads have come out from behind their elaborate creations step into the spotlight and become celebs in their own right. In addition to making tasty treats on TV, many of these pastry chefs have their own bakeries, have published books and transcended their kitchens.
Pastry chefs often start out with some type of training. At Centennial College’s Baking and Pastry Arts Management program students are learning the fundamental baking and pastry arts skills to work within the baking sector. The baking and pastry arts courses in this program include experience in an onsite commercial bakeshop and a 14-week field placement.
If you want to know more about how today’s celeb bakers have set themselves apart, take a look below.
Anna Olson
While she wasn’t born in Canada, Anna Olson was raised in Toronto, so she is definitely known as one of the country’s most famous chefs. Olson’s baking journey started when she would wander through Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market during her lunch break when she worked at a bank. She eventually enrolled at a College of Culinary Arts in Colorado. After traveling across the U.S., she became a pastry chef at Inn on the Twenty in Jordan, Ontario. Since then, she’s become a Food Network sweetheart and published several books. You may have seen Olson on shows such as Bake with Anna Olson, Inspired and Anna Olson, and most recently, Iron Chef Canada.
Duff Goldman
No pastry chef list today is complete without Jeffrey Adam “Duff” Goldman, who was basically destined to bake. At 14, the Detroit-born chef worked at a bagel store before applying to a Baltimore restaurant during high school, where he was hired to make cornbread and biscuits. Duff eventually went on to attend a Culinary Institute in California. In 2000, he opened Charm City Cakes and became known for his unusual cakes and hiring people who didn’t have experience as pastry chefs but rather painters, architects, and sculptors. Since being featured on reality TV show Ace of Cakes, Duff’s work has also appeared on Food Network Challenge, Iron Chef America, Oprah, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Man v. Food and more.
Lorraine Pascale
Hailing from the United Kingdom, Lorraine Pascale took her career from the runway to the kitchen as she started out as a model, who appeared on the cover of American Elle and Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue in 1998. After she took a diploma cookery course in 2005, she worked at restaurants before establishing herself as a specialist cakemaker. In 2011, she hosted a BBC show called Baking Made Easy and published a book based on the series. Since then, Pascale has continued to appear on U.K. TV and publish books, becoming well known across the pond and selling almost one million books in the U.K. alone.
Written by: Izabela Szydlo
Resources:
- https://www.centennialcollege.ca/programs-courses/full-time/baking-pastry-management/
- https://www.hellomagazine.com/cuisine/2017021336600/the-best-celebrity-chefs-and-bakers-to-follow-on-instagram/
- https://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-famous-bakers/reference
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Goldman
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Olson
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Pascale