Learning Why the Cookie Crumbles

More Would-Be Chefs Have Their Eyes on the Desserts

(By Michael Temchine For The Washington Post)

Melanie Wanders grew up in a family of cooks. She baked cookies and made caramel corn as a girl and worked in a country club kitchen during high school.

She interned at the renowned Chez Panisse restaurant in California and received a bachelor's degree from the Culinary Institute of America. Then she jumped into chocolate making -- first in Los Angeles, then in Germany.

These days, she and husband, Wilhelm Wanders, make chocolate at their Wanders Chocolatier in Manassas, which sells online (a one-pound assortment retails for $55.95) and at half a dozen gourmet shops.

"I like it every morning when I walk in and I smell the chocolates," Wanders said.

She believes she has found the sweetest career -- and she's in good company. Enrollments in culinary schools continue to increase. Many career-changers are joining the 19-year-olds in pastry classes at the Culinary Institute or at Johnson & Wales University, which offers degrees in culinary arts at its four campuses.

Graduates of the baking and pastry arts programs at Johnson & Wales are most interested in establishing a business such as a bakery, bakery cafe or wedding cake company, said Wanda Cropper, an assistant dean who once worked at the Marriott headquarters and ran a District wholesale pastry business.

"Every week a new chocolate maker or chocolatier pops up," said Wanders, who compares the rising popularity of chocolate to wine's growth a decade or more ago. As more sweet shops open, they create career opportunities. So do restaurants and gourmet food outlets that sell signature desserts.

Yet such jobs are hotly sought after -- and hot once they're obtained, too. "There is quite a bit of competition," said Robert Jorin of the Culinary Institute's California campus.

Tough competition and low wages are two drawbacks to careers in sweets.

But there are advantages -- from the joy of creating new dishes to the camaraderie of the kitchen to the happiness of giving people food they crave. "I've heard some moans from women that have been surprising when they have our chocolates," Wanders said.

Perhaps that explains why people try to establish credentials with an internship or two at a top restaurant or hotel or with a chef with a stellar reputation. Such internships are generally unpaid. "They would do anything to get in there and peel potatoes all day," Jorin said. Like many, he believes internships provide valuable experience and may open doors.

Some sweets chefs say newcomers can learn as much as an apprentice or in entry-level jobs as they will in culinary school. "I wouldn't have gone had I known," said Janelle Birdsall, pastry chef at Black's Bar and Kitchen in Bethesda. She graduated from the California Culinary Academy and then worked for a classical French pastry chef.

Jorin suggests, however, that students learn a broader range of cuisines and cooking styles versus a narrower focus when apprenticing with one chef. And he said many employers want a chef with a degree so they know they're getting someone with intelligence and a certain caliber of skills.

Pastry chefs and chocolate makers need to understand the basics of how ingredients and cooking work, have a business sense and be creative and inventive. "Chocolate is so temperamental -- one degree can change everything," Wanders said. "We tweak everything to get the perfect product."

Whether working with chocolate or fruit pies, most pastry chefs start in low-paying jobs. Earnings depend on the establishment as well as on reputation and experience -- and sometimes, how well their sweets sell. Median pay ranges from $12 to $19 an hour nationwide, and can approach $30 an hour for some, according to the government's Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Often, those in sweet careers start as kitchen assistants or assistants to the pastry chef, then step up in pay and responsibility. Birdsall figures a good work ethic and willingness to learn are important. She works 60 to 65 hours a week, and may add hours as some of her summer help heads back to school. She estimates she makes 60 desserts during the week and on weekends, 120. "There's never any down time," she said.

Despite the glamorous notion of a chef's job as seen on the Food Network, the work can be physically demanding and quite menial -- fetching big boxes of fruit or chocolate, standing for eight or 10 hours a day and stirring over 300 degree burners.

But chefs do get to sample some sweet fare. Although surrounded by chocolates, Wanders limits herself to one a day.

"If I start eating it," she said, "I just want to keep eating it."