Cake chefs rise with prestige of pastry

Dessert profits are not half-baked

June 6, 2000
Web posted at: 4:03 p.m. EDT (2003 GMT)

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Sinful chocolate confections and crusty cherry pie were once exiled to the back burner at fine U.S. eateries, but Americans' fascination with cooking is the icing on the cake for pastry chefs who are rising to the top.

Now the same restaurants that once offered only desserts baked by outside suppliers are clamoring for their own cake conjurers to stage the meal's great finale.

A realization that there is dough to be made from apple strudel has led cooking schools to add separate programs devoted entirely to the art. For example, The Culinary Institute of America, the nation's oldest culinary school, has rolled out an enhanced pastry program and just this year added its first bakery cafe to its four top-flight restaurants.

"This is the first time in the history of the school we are sold out," said Thomas Gumpel, associate dean for baking and pastry arts. There are no slots to enter the program at the Hyde Park, New York, campus until February, he said. "I get calls every day from restaurants needing pastry chefs."

Food experts say the interest in "artisan" baking began in the 1980s as Americans became intrigued by better cooking in general. A number of influences whipped up excitement in the category, such as attention-grabbing architectural dessert designs by Richard Leach, now at Manhattan's Park Avenue Cafe, and Dan Budd, a professor at the culinary institute.

Another layer of prestige was added in 1990 when the James Beard Foundation began its award program and included an honor for best pastry chef.

'A bad dessert can ruin the meal'

"It's the finale," said Anne McManus, the executive pastry chef at Manhattan's Maloney & Porcelli. "It's the last impression. A bad dessert can ruin the meal."

Many fine restaurants now realize this is no half-baked trend and tout the names of their pastry chefs on a separate dessert menu. These acclaimed bakers are no longer unknowns filling bread and pastry orders from the executive chef.

"It used to be you were the last one to get equipment, you were low man on the totem pole," said Claudia Fleming of Manhattan's renown Gramercy Tavern, who won this year's James Beard top pastry chef award.

"Now I say, 'You show me the menu and I'll decide what goes with the meal,"' Gumpel said.

Like many other U.S. cooking schools, the culinary institute, founded in 1946, did not always offer separate baking and pastry programs, providing such courses as part of its overall curriculum instead.

It started its School of Baking and Pastry 10 years ago and now offers a 38-month Bachelor of Professional Studies and a 21-month Associate in Occupational Studies in Baking and Pastry. Students can study topics as varied as decorating wedding cakes, restaurant law, nutritional baking, psychology of human behavior and Asian history and culture.

As enrollment in the pastry and baking school grew, the institute puffed up the curriculum and completed the first 21-month cycle of the new courses in January.

This coincided with the opening of the Apple Pie Bakery Cafe, where students get real-life experience in running a professional bakeshop, doing everything from making chocolate and baking apple walnut sourdough bread to ringing up the cash register and interacting with customers.

Mouthwatering desserts draw outsiders

Gumpel said the homey cafe, just inside the college's main building, is a key to the baking program's growing popularity. He said the school had expected the cafe to draw 300 to 400 people daily but instead it is averaging between 700 to 800.

"Almost everyone eating here is an outsider," he said, gesturing at the long line snaking from outside the door past a counter of mouthwatering apricot ginger scones and Calvados Napoleons.

The greater prestige of desserts has been particularly sweet for women, who have had a tough time breaking into the ranks of executive chefs at many top restaurants.

Women are the majority in many pastry programs, including at the institute, where they are 70 percent of those studying baking, compared to a 69-31 percent ratio of men and women in the school's culinary arts program.

"The testosterone that flows through the hot line in the kitchen is unbelievable," Fleming said. "Women are considered weaker and were always pushed off to pastry."

"It's easier for a woman to succeed in pastry," McManus, a veteran of the Pierre Hotel and the Rainbow Room, agreed. "There aren't that many women in New York who have made names for themselves. I'm still the only woman working in this entire kitchen."

Women say the hours are no less grueling in pastry than in other culinary areas but it does have other benefits.

"Men are always pushed into group situations ... like group sports with a leader," said Fleming. "In the kitchen the chef is your captain, but in pastry there is more autonomy, more independence. Women relish that. you are permitted to be creative sooner than on the hot line."

Baking is artistic

Indeed, it is the creative side of pastry and baking that draws so many women. Fleming, for example, was a professional modern dancer and McManus got an undergraduate degree in art and education before they became chefs.

"It (baking) is very artistic but exact and I'm very detail oriented," said McManus. "You have to have a lot of patience, which is why a lot of American men can't handle it."

Having a bakery and pastry background also gives chefs options besides working in a restaurant -- running a bakery cafe, for example, Gumpel said. "Bakery cafes are highly profitable ... the check amount might be lower but the volume is high," he said.

Specialty cake baking is also a good business. "People are looking for better-tasting wedding cakes now," said Budd. "We teach students a lot about decorating. It's an extremely profitable business."

The growing prestige of baking also comes at a time when traditional American-style desserts are in vogue.

"Homestyle American desserts are the most popular. Ultimately that's what people like," said McManus. "It's like the kiss of death giving it (a dessert) a French name."

Building a dessert on an unlikely flavor can also be risky business. "If it's warm and chocolate it's nirvana for most people," Fleming said. "But I can't give away prune desserts."

Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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