The Buzz on Future Pastry Chefs and Bakers

Eve M. Tai

The Buzz at SCCC.

Few people are more stoked about their future métier than students training to become pastry chefs. After all, who doesn't love someone obsessed with cakes, cookies, and croissants? Even if you end up as a CPA in a cubicle one day, you'll always have bragging rights to your pastry-arts diploma.

On a recent bustling Friday morning at Seattle Central Community College, students flocked to the school's snacketeria, the Buzz. Young women clad in chef jackets scurried behind the counter to fill a stream of requests for scones, tarts, and muffins--all the handiwork of students enrolled in the school's Specialty Desserts & Breads program. Every five minutes or so, a budding chef would whisk a new tray of reserve pastries to replenish the rapidly depleting front line.

Eve M. Tai

Dainty Wonders.

Pastry-case selections ranged from take-out-friendly lemon-poppyseed muffins to showpiece creations like raspberry crème brulée and orange date cake with orange slices and mousse, coated in a soft igloo of cream. A sampling of these dinner-party-worthy desserts fared impressively well. A dainty vanilla Bavarian buchée with brandied cherries collapsed in splendor by the second bite into a sweet mix of crisp puff pastry, cream, and tart fruit. And the banana pavé, while not a real looker, was a small bite of banana cream, rum, and ground-hazelnut decadence.

But don't let the fancy-pants desserts and pastries make you overlook the artisanal breads--the rounds of Vermont sourdough incised with concentric circles looked gorgeous. So did the walnut bread, freshly baked and ferried out by a student named Randi. The soft, moist dough spiked with meaty walnuts soon had me babbling about hope for the future bakers of America.

Eve M. Tai

Walnut bread beauties.

A few baked goods did stumble. The crust on my cherry scone was unevenly browned and a little burnt at the heel; the lemon poppyseed muffin was a bit dry. But at bargain prices--$1.25 for the scone, $1 for the muffin, $2.50 for the walnut bread--it's unsporting to dwell on the flaws. More important, what the pastries lack in perfection they make up for in eager, earnest effort. Here's where students can practice their ambitious art at modest prices before their real-world debut.

You can support these future pastry chefs and bakers by stopping by the Buzz from Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Enter off Broadway.) Consider it your service to humanity.

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