I decorate cakes as a hobby and bake anything and everything I can for friends and co-workers. Eventually I would love to have a "legal" kitchen in which I could do cakes, cookies, pies etc for the mass public. My question is, is spending $ on a school that specializes in Pastry Arts worth the time and money? I would love to impove my skills and perhaps learn new techniques (in cake decorating and baking alike) and am unsure where to go, other than one of these schools. Can someone let me know what your experience has been?
Much Thanks,
Kimberly

Kimberly,

I think you will find a mixed bag of responses from the general concensus. I run into just as many people who are self taught as I do that have graduated from a pastry program. I will only speak to my own experience and truly don;t believe there is right answer for every person but rather a right situation for each person. I am finishing culinary school this year and have found it to be a very good experience. It enables me the opportunity to learn from many different experienced chefs within a very short amount of time, I will have exposure to about 20 different chefs over my 2 years all with various backgrounds, expertise, etc. I have also worked in a high end high volume bakery where the head chef/owner never attended culinary school and she had amazing technique as well. The benefit for me of school is networking, weekly "pastry skills" opportunities which are free, your tuition covers materials, etc, exposure to everything from chocolate work, sugar work, cakes, french pastry, breads. It gave me the opportunity to play with these other areas and decide which was for me and which things I will never include in my own repertoire. Good luck in whatever you choose

Is this your passion? If it is, then I vote go for it!

I did 4 years training and have found it the best time and money I have spent to learn the skills from my teacher.

Here are some opinions:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-687068-pastry.html+school

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-688869-culinary.html+school

I'm sure there are more threads available on the subject, but right now the search function won't let you read past the first page of results.

I did a pastry arts program and I think it was great. You learn a lot and it's fun, so if you have the means to do it I say go for it.

Never let age be a deteriment to your aspirations. I taught an associate degree program for 7 years and many students were in the 40s and 50s!!

CWR41 - Thanks for those threads, they pretty much confirmed for me that taking individual classes with local (or not so local) cake decorators may be the best way for me to go.

The Pittsburgh Culinary Inst. pastry school is $40,000.oo
Do you want to pay that back? It's up to you. Good luck!

I am going to start an AA pastry program in the Spring. The main reason is because I want to work as a decorator at someone elses bakery and you really need education to get your foot in the door. I wish it weren't so, but no matter how great your portfolio is, if you don't have commercial baking experience you might as well not even apply. Also the networking that you get from meeting and working with so many people in the field is invaluble.

I know that some programs are quite exspensive, but the one I am getting will virtually be free after financial aide and grants. Look at some of your local community colleges to see if they offer an AA Pastry Program.