The baking and pastry arts is a special expertise in food service management. Much like a wine sommelier, baking and pastry arts students and professionals specialize in an area they feel passionately about. You’ll find culinary experts in baking & pastries working in high-end bakeries or starting their own businesses and brands.
Let’s learn more about this culinary field and what it takes to achieve unparalleled success in your specialization.
What Is a Baking & Pastry Arts and Food Service Management Degree?
A baking and pastry arts and food service management degree lie at the crossroads of food service management and hospitality. Once completing a top degree program, you’ll be ready to become a premier pastry chef, having learned baking, confection, and pastry skills such as:
- Working in a commercial-grade bakery kitchen
- Proper mixing methods for various ingredients
- Advanced baking approaches for different ovens, altitudes, and more
- Shaping and sculpting techniques
- Creating artisan breads and pastries
- Leavening methods
- Designing chocolate and confection displays
- Constructing one-of-a-kind wedding cakes that happy couples and guests will never forget
- Sourcing the best ingredients for every treat
- Understanding how flavors work together
- The science and nutrition factors behind it all
You’ll be ready and excited to create treats, including cakes, cookies, pies, muffins, tortes, scones, breads, rolls, and any other baked goods you can imagine in restaurants, bakeries, catering businesses, or hotels.
Everyone can buy cake mixes, boxed cookies, and loaves of bread at the supermarket, but most people will always love pastries made by baking professionals who love their craft and are proud of their work. It’s always special to visit the local patisserie or bakery to get a hand-crafted treat rather than a mass-produced cookie or muffin.
The look and the taste will never measure up, and they will look to baking and pastry artists to provide something unique and delicious, particularly for special occasions.
History
When you think of eating a local bakery-made croissant, so light and flaky, you might wonder how they came up with the recipe. Whether you consciously think about it or not, you’re enjoying a piece of 13th-century Austrian history with each bite. The rich history is there with every pastry and bread you enjoy from an industry professional.
The baking and pastry arts offer a well-recorded tradition that you can pass along to your customers, family, and friends.
While we don’t have the name of the first official baker, we know that baking was intentional. You’ve probably heard the phrase, ‘Baking is a science,’ once or twice. This saying is true, no matter how artistic the result is. One reason for this is that you need to understand the ideal combination of ingredients and the amount of time it takes for the whole process to ensure the perfect loaf.
Another reason we know the creation of baking and pastry arts was no accident is that, while it can be argued that bread is vital for sustenance, desserts are made purely for sensory pleasure.
But in both cases, bakers and pastry chefs through the ages handed down gifts and traditions that continue to this day. They developed easy-to-follow recipes that have lasted through wars, depressions, recessions, and everything in between, providing delights in good times and fond memories and hopes in bad times.
From the Roman Empire’s mass production of bread to the European Middle Ages, bread has served as a foundational source of sustenance for everyday citizens to royalty and everyone in between.
Of course, royalty was more apt to enjoy sweet treats and desserts, but everyone loved and still loves an occasional sweet treat.
Increase in Demand from Past to Present
According to the Globe News Wire, the bakery products market is set to surpass the US $354.6 million mark by 2032 — and that figure only represents mass-produced goods and doesn’t necessarily reflect the demand for specialty items. The most popular items are bread and rolls, which account for the highest sales volume as of 2022.
Today’s most popular baking and pastry trend? Chocolate; people love chocolate and there’s no getting around it. If you make chocolate desserts, people will buy them. But the love of chocolate doesn’t exclude all the other goodies, so never fear if you prefer cheesecakes or fruit tarts. You’ll find your market regardless of where your dessert-making passions lie.
Courses in Baking & Pastry Arts and Food Service Management
If you want to gain the knowledge and skills to stand out amid the fierce industry competition, you must select the right program. JWU offers a baking & pastry arts and food service management degree that will enable you to enter the baking and pastry arts field with unrivaled skills and knowledge.
Here are some vital things our students learn in this program:
- Food service management systems and human resource applications
- Food and beverage strategies and logistics
- The major concepts, values, and skills related to the food service management field
- The ability to understand, communicate, and connect with diverse audiences for unique purposes and situations related to food service operations
- The use of decision-support technology, equipment, and tools to facilitate streamlined processes in kitchens and other food service operations
- The standards, codes, regulations, and operational matters in kitchens and other food service environments
- The capacity to analyze and interpret pertinent information when making decisions within food service operations.
Combination of Baking & Pastry Arts and Food Service Management
You might think of baking and pastry arts and food service management as two distinct areas. It’s easy to consider bakeries and pastry shops as specialized entities, but any time you work with food items, you must understand the lay of the land in food service management.
Both areas must comply with health codes and other standards. Top educational programs combine them to ensure everyone graduates with crucial health, safety, and food quality knowledge to protect their reputation and customers’ health.
Why It Works
Food service management programs work well, building on baking and pastry arts associate degrees. They work so well together because they take your passion for baking to new heights. Prospective employers or investors will appreciate your commitment to health, safety, hospitality, and business to support your fine culinary skills.
Advantages
The coursework is designed to help you tighten your business skills as much as your baking and pastry-making skills. You will bolster your baking and pastry arts associate degree and credentials to earn your degree in two years, sometimes less than that.
But if you haven’t earned your associate degree in baking and pastry arts, you might consider pursuing your hospitality management bachelor’s degree to help you fast-track your career goals.
Importance of Food Service Management
Food service management empowers anyone in hospitality and food service to tend to the daily operations of a business, whether you are a store manager, owner, or employee. It is crucial for various food, drink, and dessert operations, such as restaurants, cafeterias, and bakeries.
A degree in food service management will help you maintain health and safety standards and business processes that lead to producing and serving high-quality food and offering peak customer service, translating to profits.
Baking & Pastry Arts and Food Service Management Degree Graduate Career Paths
While you might imagine yourself working at a local cafe or bakery, you might need to expand your horizons. There might not be enough jobs in your market, so prepare for different avenues. Besides, there are many fantastic career options in the food service and hospitality industry.
Let’s explore some exciting options in this area.
Food Service Manager
Food service managers maintain the standards and daily operations of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, hotels, school cafeterias, hospital and retirement center kitchens, catering services, and bars and pubs that prepare and serve food.
This professional is responsible for the following duties:
- Creating job descriptions and hiring and firing kitchen and wait staff
- Training and supervising kitchen and wait staff
- Maintaining inventory of and ordering food and cooking supplies
- Inspecting and keeping records of supplies and equipment
- Managing the daily sales accounting and payroll records
- Fielding customer or guest complaints and working to find solutions to improve their experience
- Establishing and enforcing an employee policy for peak performance
- Ensuring that staff understands and maintains a high level of customer performance
The average salary for a food service manager is $59,440.
Baking and Pastry Arts Manager
If you have a passion for the culinary arts and a manager’s sensibility, you might enjoy working as a baking and pastry arts manager. It is essentially the same role as a food service manager, but you will work in a business that sells baked goods and pastries, such as a bakery, grocery store, hotel, or catering service.
You will manage business operations, such as hiring and supervising employees, managing the budget, ensuring your chef has all the necessary ingredients in stock, checking the baking equipment regularly, and ensuring product quality.
A baking and pastry manager’s average annual salary is $48,872.
Food Operations Manager
A food operations manager also conducts administrative and supervisory work in the food service area, focusing more on managing complex, strategic goals. Responsibilities include long-term planning, organizing, directing, and managing staff and events.
This role is often vital to organizations with dynamic food service models, such as full-service restaurants, catering or banquet services, and specialty cafeteria and snack services. Professionals in this field must have strong analytical and organizational skills to ensure optimal coverage for various service needs and operational environments.
Food operations managers typically earn $80,600 annually on average.
Chef
Chefs run kitchens according to the establishment’s policies, standards, and menu. They direct and perform food preparation, such as seasoning foods, making salads, cooking soups, meats, fish, vegetables, desserts, and other foods on the menu.
They often conduct management and kitchen planning duties, such as performing ingredient inventories to ensure supplies and freshness, planning and pricing menu items, and ordering ingredients and kitchen supplies. A chef also receives customer complaints about food quality and presentation and works to understand what happened and ensure that such situations don’t happen again.
Many factors determine a chef’s salary, such as the type of restaurant and cost of the menu items or the chef’s education, certification, and skills, and the average annual chef salary overall is $50,454.
Explore JWU’s Bakery & Pastry Arts and Food Service Management Degree Programs
At JWU, we offer our students the most in-demand food service management skills with our Bakery & Pastry Arts and Food Service Management Degree program. This program will bolster your bakery and pastry skills to give you the freedom to find a secure job in your industry to support yourself while you do what you love.
For more information about completing your online Food Service Management degree online, complete the Request Info form, call 855-JWU-1881, or email [email protected].