hello bakers,
i've been looking at schools all around my area (hercules, ca) for baking and pastry degree! so far i've taken tours of two schools, The Art Institute of California and Le Cordon Bleu in San francisco! both are great schools, but today when i went to take a tour i told the people at Le Cordon Bleu that i wanted to go to school so that i could open up my own bakery at home! Twice from different people they kinda squashed my dreams! they told me that i shouldn't limit myself to just that, and that with california laws they make it hard or impossible to do a business from home! now one lady told me i could do that, but i would need to rent a kitchen, instead of doing everything at my home! now i need some opinions on this and some info about starting a home based business! is this possible? do i really need to go to school for 9 months to do this? what's involved? any info would help greatly! thank you all so much for reading my post!

keep baking and make it fun!

Melinda French

I believe the info you were given is correct - CA does not allow home based bakeries.

As much as the science of baking will benefit you, it will also benefit you to have business classes. I have both a degree and Baking and Pastry Arts and a MBA.

and leah has it all... really... skills and business sense.

BUT, you can bake without ANY degree.. it is learned skills, and you can teach yourself. That DOES NOT solve the problem of commercial kitchen space in CA, because you need an inspected, licensed commercial kitchen to prepare food for sale....

If home-based bakerires are illegal in California, you can't do that. You could rent space from someone, though. I think that for most people the business classes are more important than the baking classes. You can be the best decorator in the world but if you don't have any business skills your business will go straight into the toilet.