Pastrycook
What the work is
Prepares and bakes buns, cakes, pastries and desserts in a kitchen.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Weighs and measures ingredients according to recipes
- Makes, mixes, kneads, shapes and moulds dough for various pastries and desserts
- Prepares pastry fillings
- Bakes buns, cakes, pastries and desserts, monitoring oven temperatures and product appearance
- Decorates and finishes pastries, cakes and desserts with icing, glaze or other toppings
- Orders and maintains inventory of pastry supplies and ingredients
- Maintains the cleanliness of equipment and operation of a kitchen to ensure compliance with work health and safety regulations
- Collaborates with other kitchen staff to coordinate pastry production
- May package finished pastries for sale
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in the pastry section of a fictional hotel kitchen, where the oven is always warm and the bench is always cold. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A tray of croissants comes out with the layers exactly right
- A wedding cake you built arrives at the venue intact and the couple cries
- A quiet early morning with just butter, flour and music, and a perfect lamination
Hard days
- A humid day when the chocolate will not set and the dessert order is due
- Tiny details repeated a hundred times, like piping the same shape on every plate
- A last-minute birthday order on a day when the bench is already full
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 322431, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.