At thirteen years old how can i start preparing to be a pastry chef?!

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As of right now, you should just try to bake as much as possible at home and maybe read some good baking textbooks. A really good textbook to start with is "The Professional Pastry Chef" - Bo Friberg. Amazon has it.

The next step is to decide if you really want to work in this industry. I know a lot of chefs who hate their jobs. Get a job in a bakery or a restaurant when you turn 16 and find out if you like it first before you waste a bunch of money on culinary school. Working in this business for awhile will be the only way to find out if you will truly enjoy doing this as a career.

I hope you didn't decide to become a pastry chef because of stuff you saw on TV. Television does not accurately depict what its really like to work as a chef. Working as a pastry chef is NOT the same thing as baking at home.. Its not a glamorous job. Its a lot of hard work. Chefs work long hours, usually about 50 -80 hours per week. They work on their feet and often without breaks. The job can be very stressful at times. Pastry chefs often have to be at work very early in the morning. The also work nights, holidays and weekends. If you plan on having a family, good luck trying to spend time with them. I've known lots of chefs who have gotten divorced because of this.

Also, just to warn you, not a lot of people make it through culinary school. There is a high drop-out rate. When I first started culinary school, our class had about 70 people. By the second year only about 30 people were left. Of those 30 people, only 6 people finished and graduated on time. I didn't keep in touch with everybody I went to school with, but I'd be willing to bet that most of those people never graduated. And, I'll bet most of those people no longer work in the food service industry.

Not everyone is cut out for this line of work. But, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you are one of the few that make it and enjoy doing this as a career.

chef
culinary school grad
29 years in the industry

Buy any cookbook that has a decent amount of baking recipes in it, and start practising. There is nothing like experience to teach you what works and what doesn't. Read everything the cookbook says about what you're making. Take a class if you can find one. High schools and rec centres often have classes like that in the evenings or on weekends. Get a job in a restaurant as soon as you're old enough. Any kind will do to start, but get into a real restaurant, not a fast food one, as soon as you can. Restaurant work can be very high pressure and you need to know if you can cope with that. And remember, it's the kind of job you might well be doing at the times when your friends who are not working in restaurants are out having fun, or you have to leave the party early because you have to be at work and functioning well at 6 am.

Get into Food Tech/Home Economics class. Buy cookbooks or learn from a family member that knows how to make desserts. Memorize recipes and ingredients for baking, record what did and didn't work when cooking. Enter a school cooking contest because they give scholarships.

Good luck on becoming a pastry chef

At the age of 13 years, your becoming a pastry chef is good idea. Now, this is the time for your schooling. Concentrate in the studies. After that you may think about becoming a pastry chef.

suggestion

take some cooking and baking classes at home now with your parents and then take more home economics or other type classes in high school.

Take classes, and start baking stuff at home to get some extra practice.

you could buy a few books and practice.