A Career in Baking (Careers Ebooks)

Bread, in its many forms and preparations, has been a staple of the human diet -- "the staff of life"� -- since prehistoric times, when Stone Age people learned to use primitive tools to crush barley and wheat into dense cakes. Archaeologists have discovered milling stones from the Paleolithic era, traces of 5,000-year-old leavened bread, and evidence of clay ovens along the Nile River. Engravings, illustrations, hieroglyphs, and documents describe bread and bread making. The discovery that grains could be cultivated and stored ultimately enabled primitive people to give up their nomadic ways and form settlements. Therefore, not only is baking one of the world's oldest professions, but it contributed meaningfully to the emergence of human civilization!

Bread was so highly regarded it was used as currency to pay the Egyptians who built the Pyramids. During the Middle Ages, the word"lord" was derived from an Old English expression meaning ward or keeper of the bread; "lady"� comes from the term for bread kneader or bread maker. Steeped in folklore, too, bread was used in pagan rituals. In Christian tradition, hot cross buns are baked on Good Friday to ward off illness and bad luck.
Did you know the first culinary superstar was a pastry chef? While sweet baked goods have ancient origins, Marie-Antonin Careme (1784-1833) is credited with transforming pastry into a form of artistic expression with his massive, elaborately constructed, extravagantly decorated piece montees confectionery replicas of classic architectural structures. He was known as the "King of Chefs and the Chef of Kings,"with rich and powerful clientele including Napoleon, King George IV of England, Tsar Alexander I, and baron de Rothschild. Careme has been called "le Palladio de la patisserie"� (after the great Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio) and, in today's language, would be the world's first celebrity chef.

While you may not end up cooking for royalty, and the odds of landing your own nationally televised TV show are remote, professional bakers nevertheless may find themselves working for top-tier hotels, exclusive resorts, private clubs -- even the British Embassy recently advertised for a pastry chef.

On the less glamorous but somewhat trendier side, there are exciting opportunities with small, specialty bread makers like those in the burgeoning artisan baking community. Artisan breads are handmade with natural ingredients by skilled craftspersons and baked in wood-fired or hearth ovens -- "honest food from honest ingredients,"� according to the Bread Bakers Guild of America. Practitioners of the baking crafts also work for patisseries (French-flavored pastry shops), wholesale bakeries, grocery stores, and high-volume food processing plants.

Geographically, professionals in this business can be found wherever fresh baked goods are produced -- which is to say, almost anywhere: in the countryside and in college towns and in sprawling metropolitan areas all over the world.

If you have a passion for food, enjoy working with your hands, and have a bit of artistic flair, a career in baking can be personally and professionally rewarding, and fun! It requires passion, a commitment to lifelong learning, and the willingness to tolerate long hours and hot kitchens.

This new Careers Ebook contains a wealth of unbiased information about an occupational field, based on the latest national surveys. Careers Ebooks cover attractive and unattractive sides, opportunities, education necessary, personal qualifications required, earnings, descriptions of different job specialties, first person accounts by those in the field, and how to get started; including practical advice on what to do now. There are live links to schools and colleges, associations, periodicals and other sources of reliable information.