How to Become an Executive Pastry Chef in India: Career Ladder from Junior to Top

The Pinnacle of the Salaried Pastry Career

Ask any serious pastry aspirant in India what the ceiling looks like, and most will tell you: head chef at a good hotel. They're thinking too small. The real ceiling — at least within the salaried track — is the Executive Pastry Chef position. And it's a ceiling worth understanding before you decide how seriously to train.

Executive Pastry Chefs at India's five-star hotels and luxury hospitality groups earn ₹1 lakh to ₹1.5 lakh per month and above. At flagship properties of Taj, Oberoi, ITC, Marriott, and Hyatt, the figure climbs to ₹2 lakh or more when performance bonuses, accommodation allowances, and meal benefits are included. These are not exceptional outliers — they are the standard compensation for the role at top-tier properties.

Beyond the salary, the executive role carries something that no junior position can offer: genuine creative authority. You are not executing someone else's vision. You are setting the pastry identity of the property — the dessert menus, the wedding cake offerings, the festival specials, the patisserie display, the showpiece philosophy. Your name goes on the work. That matters to people who bake because they love it.

But here is the honest part. The path from commis pastry chef to executive is specific, demanding, and long. It takes most people 12 to 15 years of intentional work. Not 15 years of simply showing up — 15 years of deliberately building skills, reputation, and relationships across the hospitality industry.

This guide maps that path exactly. Every level of the career ladder, what it pays, what it demands, how long to stay, and what separates the chefs who reach the top from those who plateau mid-career. If you are considering a serious investment in pastry training and want to understand the full ceiling before you commit, this is the roadmap.

The 6-Level Career Ladder: Full Breakdown

The pastry kitchen follows a brigade system adapted from classical French culinary tradition. Each level is distinct — in title, responsibility, decision-making authority, and compensation. Understanding exactly what each level demands is essential for planning your progression intentionally rather than waiting for promotions that may or may not come.

Here is the complete career ladder, with current 2026 salary ranges for five-star hotel and premium hospitality properties in major Indian metros. For a deeper look at salary data across all levels and property types, see our detailed pastry chef salary guide for India.

Level 1: Commis Pastry Chef (₹12,000–₹18,000 | 0–1 year)

This is where every professional career begins. The commis pastry chef is the most junior position in a hotel pastry kitchen, and the role is exactly what it sounds like: learning. Your first year in a professional kitchen will feel overwhelming in ways that no training programme can fully prepare you for. The pace, the volume, the precision demanded, the physical stamina required — these are things you develop by doing.

As a commis, your primary responsibility is mise en place — getting everything ready before service. You are measuring, weighing, pre-baking tart shells, making ganaches, portioning desserts, and keeping your station clean and organised. You are not yet making creative decisions. You are building the muscle memory and kitchen fluency that every higher level depends on.

What to focus on at this level: Accuracy. Speed. Cleanliness. Ask questions constantly. Absorb how the CDP and sous chef think. Do not wait to be taught — watch, volunteer for tasks above your station, and demonstrate hunger. Complacent commis chefs spend two or three years at this level; hungry ones move in twelve months.

Where to work: If possible, start in a five-star hotel or premium pastry brand, not a hotel coffee shop or standalone café. The systems, standards, and mentors at a top property will shape your professional instincts in ways that take years to unlearn elsewhere.

Level 2: Demi Chef de Partie (₹18,000–₹28,000 | 1–3 years)

The demi CDP is a transitional role. You have demonstrated competence at the commis level and are now trusted with a partial section — perhaps the chocolate station, the plated desserts section, or the bread baking station — on your own. You are still not the decision-maker for the section, but you are responsible for its output when the CDP is not present.

This is the level where technical consistency becomes the defining skill. Any trained chef can produce a beautiful chocolate tart once. A demi CDP can produce it identically on the 200th occasion under pressure, without the recipe in front of them. That consistency is what the hospitality industry runs on.

What to focus on at this level: Own your section entirely. Know every recipe in it cold. Understand why each step exists — not just what to do, but the food science behind it. The chefs who ask "why does this ganache split when I add cream too quickly?" and then find the answer are the ones who become CDPs in 18 months instead of three years.

Level 3: Chef de Partie (₹28,000–₹45,000 | 3–5 years)

The CDP level is where your identity as a professional pastry chef solidifies. You now own a section completely — responsible for its production, its quality, its organisation, and the junior chefs working under you. For the first time, you are managing people, not just managing your own output.

This transition from individual contributor to section leader is where many talented technical chefs stall. The skills that make you an excellent commis — precision, personal output, following instructions well — are not the same skills that make you an excellent CDP. Leadership, communication, the ability to train juniors while maintaining your own output, prioritisation under conflicting pressures: these are the CDP's core competencies.

What to focus on at this level: Recipe costing and section cost management. Training your commis. Taking ownership of problems rather than escalating everything. Begin thinking about menu contribution — bring ideas to your sous chef. CDPs who come with proposals rather than just problems are the ones who get noticed for promotion.

Level 4: Pastry Sous Chef (₹45,000–₹75,000 | 5–8 years)

The sous chef is the executive's right hand. You are managing the full pastry brigade, handling rota planning, monitoring food costs across all sections, maintaining quality standards during the executive's absence, and contributing substantially to menu development. At larger properties, the sous chef may effectively run the pastry kitchen day-to-day while the executive handles strategy and external commitments.

This is the make-or-break level for most pastry careers. Chefs who spend five or more years as sous chef without progressing to head chef often plateau here — their skills are strong, but they lack the business acumen, hiring authority, or external profile to move into the top roles. The ones who do progress are those who have spent their sous chef years developing the business and leadership skills the executive role demands, not just refining their technical craft.

What to focus on at this level: Own the numbers — food cost percentages, wastage tracking, portion control. Build relationships with vendors. Begin developing a signature style or specialisation. Start representing the kitchen externally — at vendor meetings, hotel events, media interactions if opportunities arise.

Level 5: Head / Senior Pastry Chef (₹75,000–₹1,10,000 | 8–12 years)

The head or senior pastry chef leads the full pastry department at a single property. You own the menu entirely — designing seasonal updates, overseeing the patisserie display, managing the wedding cake programme, liaising with the food and beverage director on event menus, and building and managing your team from hiring to performance reviews.

At this level, your technical skills are assumed — you are not rewarded for being able to temper chocolate or laminate croissants. What distinguishes exceptional head chefs is their business leadership and creative vision. The head chefs who move to executive roles are those who can demonstrate a clear pastry identity for their property, manage a team that consistently delivers to that vision, and operate within budget while maintaining quality.

Level 6: Executive Pastry Chef (₹1,00,000–₹1,50,000+ | 12+ years)

The executive pastry chef is a strategic leader, not just a kitchen operator. At properties with multiple food and beverage outlets, or in hotel groups with several properties, the executive oversees pastry across all of them. Your decisions — on menu direction, procurement, staffing, standards, and the overall pastry brand identity of the property or group — are strategic business decisions as much as culinary ones.

We cover the full scope of this role in the next section.

What Makes an Executive Different from a Head Chef

From the outside, the gap between head pastry chef and executive pastry chef may look like just a title change. From the inside, it is a fundamentally different job. Understanding this distinction before you are in the role is what allows you to prepare for it, not just arrive at it.

P&L Ownership Across the Pastry Operation

A head chef manages food costs within guidelines set by management. An executive pastry chef owns the P&L of the entire pastry operation — including revenue from patisserie retail, wedding cakes, restaurant desserts, banqueting, and catering. This means understanding your contribution margin at the outlet level, not just tracking whether you're within your food cost percentage. It means making decisions about pricing, product mix, and operational efficiency that directly affect the property's bottom line.

This is the skill that surprises most talented chefs when they first reach executive level. You can be the most technically gifted pastry chef in India and still struggle in the executive role if you cannot read a P&L, understand contribution margin, or make the business case for a menu change to the General Manager. The executive pastry chef is accountable to the finance department, not just the culinary team.

Menu Strategy Across Multiple Outlets

At a five-star hotel with an all-day dining restaurant, a fine dining outlet, a café and patisserie, a bar programme, and a banqueting department, the executive pastry chef sets the pastry direction for all of them simultaneously. These are not the same menu — fine dining desserts demand a different philosophy than banqueting desserts, and both differ from what the patisserie counter sells — but they must share a coherent identity. Creating and maintaining that coherence across high-volume and high-complexity operations is a strategic skill, not just a culinary one.

Media and Public Presence

Executive pastry chefs at premium properties increasingly serve as the public face of their kitchen. This means participation in food media — magazine features, TV appearances, social media presence, food festival appearances. At some properties, particularly those positioning themselves as culinary destinations, the executive pastry chef's personal brand contributes directly to the hotel's positioning. This is not something most chefs train for, but it is a real component of the executive role at the top level.

Hiring, Team Building, and Culture

The executive pastry chef approves all hiring decisions for the pastry brigade. This includes commis chefs, CDPs, and the sous chef — the person who will be their most critical collaborator. Building a team that maintains quality standards across 365 days of the year, through staff turnover, seasonal pressures, and varying demand, is one of the most challenging aspects of the role. It requires HR instincts as much as culinary ones.

Vendor Relationships and Procurement Strategy

At the executive level, you are directly involved in vendor negotiations for premium ingredients — imported couverture chocolate, specialty flours, dairy, seasonal fruit, and sugar work materials. These relationships are strategic: consistency of supply, quality reliability, cost control, and exclusivity arrangements for signature ingredients all affect your kitchen's output. The executive who has cultivated strong supplier relationships over their career has a significant operational advantage.

The 5 Skills That Accelerate Your Climb

Not all skills contribute equally to career progression in the pastry kitchen. Some are prerequisites — you must have them to stay employed. Others are differentiators — they separate the chefs who advance from those who plateau. Here are the five that have the most impact at every level of the career ladder.

1. Technical Excellence: The Non-Negotiable Foundation

No shortcut exists here. Before any other skill matters, you must be technically exceptional. The pastry kitchen's core disciplines — chocolate work, pastry lamination, sugar craft, entremets, bread baking, plated desserts — each require years of deliberate practice to master. And within those disciplines, the techniques that separate professionals from amateurs are specific and demanding.

Take chocolate tempering as an example. Any baker can melt and set chocolate. Professional chocolate tempering — achieving perfect crystal structure, working with different origins and percentages, tempering under varying ambient conditions, creating bonbons with clean snap and mirror gloss at high volume — is a distinct skill that takes real time to develop. The pastry kitchens at five-star hotels see immediately, in the first week, whether a candidate has this foundation or not.

Lamination is another area where technical gaps become visible fast. Producing croissants with even honeycomb structure, consistent layers, and proper caramelisation on the exterior requires mastery of butter temperature, fold timing, and dough hydration — variables that no recipe can fully specify, because they depend on your specific kitchen environment. This intuition is built only through repetition.

Sugar work — pulling and blowing sugar for showpieces, creating spun sugar decorations, making isomalt vessels — is the domain where technical excellence creates visible career differentiation. Very few pastry chefs in India are genuinely accomplished sugar artists. If you are one, you will be noticed.

2. Business Acumen: The Skill That Most Chefs Underinvest In

The transition from CDP to sous chef, and from sous chef to head chef, is almost always slowed by a lack of business skills rather than technical deficiency. Chefs who can cost a recipe accurately, understand contribution margin, identify wastage patterns, and make data-informed menu decisions progress faster than technically equal chefs who lack these abilities.

This is not because hospitality is primarily a financial business — it is primarily a hospitality business. But financial literacy is what allows the kitchen's creative ambitions to survive contact with the reality of hotel operations. A head chef who can present a menu change with a clear business rationale gets it approved. One who presents it on purely creative grounds often doesn't.

Recipe costing, yield percentage calculations, food cost percentage monitoring, portion control implementation, and wastage reduction are skills you can begin developing at the CDP level — long before they are formally required of you. The sous chef who already thinks like an executive is the one who gets promoted to executive.

3. Leadership and Team Management

The pastry brigade in a five-star hotel is typically four to twelve people, depending on the property's scale. Managing this team — scheduling, training, maintaining quality standards, handling conflicts, motivating people during 14-hour shifts before a major wedding — is a full-time skillset that exists independently of pastry technique.

The best chefs to work under share several characteristics: they explain the reason behind every instruction, they give feedback in real time without demeaning the recipient, they protect their teams under pressure while maintaining high standards, and they develop their juniors actively rather than treating them as cheap labour. These are learnable behaviours — they are also rare enough that demonstrating them clearly accelerates your visibility to senior management.

Begin developing these skills at the commis level, even when you have no one reporting to you. The way you ask questions, the way you receive feedback, the way you support CDPs during pressure — all of it is observed and remembered by the people who make promotion decisions.

4. Innovation and Menu Development

The pastry professionals who reach the top are not the ones who execute the existing menu most reliably — they are the ones who make the existing menu better. Proposing new items, bringing in seasonal ingredients, developing festival specials, creating signature desserts that become associated with the property's identity — this is what head chefs and executives look for when they are deciding who to promote.

Building your R&D habit begins by reading — culinary journals, international pastry competition coverage, ingredient trend reports. It continues by experimenting on your own time, bringing finished products to your chef for feedback, and being willing to iterate many times before something is ready for the menu. The chefs who contribute menu ideas but give up when the first version isn't accepted never develop the innovation muscle. The ones who return with version five, incorporating all the feedback, do.

See our full guide to building a pastry chef career in India for more detail on how to develop your creative identity throughout the career ladder.

5. Communication: Upward, Downward, and External

Chefs are not traditionally trained communicators, and the industry has not historically demanded it at junior levels. This changes rapidly as you move up the ladder. By the time you are a sous chef, you are regularly presenting cost reports to the F&B director, training sessions to your junior brigade, and event proposals to the catering team. By the time you are a head chef, you may be speaking with the General Manager weekly and representing the kitchen at owner events.

Executive pastry chefs at premium properties must be comfortable presenting to groups, speaking on camera, writing menu descriptions that communicate provenance and technique to guests, and negotiating with vendors in business terms. None of this is especially difficult, but it requires deliberate development — it does not come automatically from time in the kitchen.

Begin developing communication habits early: write concise email updates to your chef, prepare clearly structured briefings before section meetings, and volunteer to conduct training sessions for newer commis chefs. The habit of communicating clearly and professionally sets you apart at every level.

The Fast Track: How Some Chefs Get There in 8 Years Instead of 15

The 10–15 year timeline for reaching executive level is a median, not a minimum. Some chefs reach the executive level in 8 years. A few exceptional individuals with the right combination of talent, timing, and strategic choices reach it in 6 or 7. Understanding what separates these fast-trackers from their peers is valuable whether your goal is to accelerate or simply to avoid the traps that slow most careers unnecessarily.

Choose a Growing Hotel Group Strategically

The organisation you join has a dramatic effect on your promotion timeline. A hotel group that is actively expanding — opening new properties, launching new F&B concepts, entering new cities — needs leaders at a faster rate than a stable, mature group with established departments. Junior chefs who join growing brands during their expansion phase often move through the ladder faster because new properties need heads who have been internally trained.

Research which Indian hotel groups are opening properties in the next five years. The Taj group, Marriott's Indian portfolio, Hyatt, and several mid-luxury domestic brands have active expansion pipelines. Joining at the right moment — when a brand is scaling but before the leadership positions are all filled — is a strategic move that the best career builders make deliberately.

If you want to understand what working at the five-star level looks like from day one, read our guide to becoming a pastry chef at a five-star hotel in India.

Volunteer for Special Projects and High-Visibility Events

In every hotel kitchen, there are moments of unusual opportunity: a visiting Michelin-starred chef who needs a local pastry collaborator, a major government event that requires exceptional pastry showcases, a new restaurant opening that needs a signature dessert menu. Most people avoid these opportunities because they are extra work on top of an already demanding schedule. The fast-trackers take every one.

High-visibility events are where relationships with senior management are built, where your abilities are observed by decision-makers outside your immediate chain, and where you develop skills — working under extreme pressure, producing at exceptional quality with minimal time — that compress years of normal development into weeks.

Develop a Specialisation That Creates Scarcity

Generalists compete with many people. Specialists compete with few. The pastry chef who is genuinely outstanding at eggless wedding cakes is one of perhaps a few hundred in India. The chef who has deep expertise in artisan chocolate is similarly rare. The chef who can design and execute sugar sculpture showpieces at a competition level is rarer still.

A recognised specialisation does two things for your career: it creates demand specifically for you (rather than for any competent pastry chef), and it gives you a clear identity that travels through the industry via word of mouth. When a new property is looking for a head chef and the General Manager asks "do you know anyone outstanding in eggless?" and your name comes up, that is the power of a specialisation.

Build Your Personal Brand and Industry Visibility

The executive pastry chefs in India who earn the most and have the most career optionality are not the most skilled in the kitchen — they are the most known. Their Instagram accounts document their work; they appear at food festivals; they are quoted in hospitality media; they serve as judges in competition events. This visibility creates opportunities that never reach chefs who do excellent work invisibly.

You do not need a large following to benefit from personal branding. You need a professional Instagram presence that documents your work at quality, a habit of sharing insights in culinary forums or industry WhatsApp groups, and participation in professional events and competitions. This takes consistent effort over years — but it compounds. A chef with 5 years of documented professional work on their profile is immediately distinguishable from one whose history is invisible.

Get International Exposure — Even Briefly

The pastry industry in India values international exposure highly. A six-month stint in a pastry kitchen in Dubai, Singapore, Europe, or Japan does three things: it exposes you to techniques, ingredients, and production systems you will not encounter in India; it signals confidence and ambition to every Indian employer who reads your CV; and it gives you cultural context that makes you a more effective mentor when you return.

International exposure does not require years abroad. A stage (unpaid apprenticeship) at a respected international property, a culinary study trip, or even a focused placement programme like those available to alumni of professional Indian institutes can provide meaningful exposure in a short period. Our guide to working as a pastry chef abroad from India covers this in detail.

Where to Start: Why Your First Training Decision Matters Most

Of all the decisions you make on the path to executive pastry chef, the one you make before your career even begins — where to train — has the most compounding impact. This is not an argument for spending more money. It is an argument for spending carefully and understanding exactly what your first training investment buys you.

Your First Placement Is Your Most Leveraged Moment

The hotel or bakery where you start your career is not just your first job. It is the credential that every subsequent employer uses to assess your baseline. A commis chef from the Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development or from a well-regarded professional pastry institute has a different first conversation than one from an unrecognised programme. The gap does not always close — it often widens over time, because the former builds on a foundation of industry relationships and standards that the latter has to construct from scratch.

This is why the best institute for your first diploma is the one with the strongest hotel and industry placement network. Not the one with the most attractive brochure, or the longest curriculum in pages, or the most impressive-sounding international affiliation. The one whose graduates are actually working in the kitchens you want to work in. Ask any institute for a list of where their last three batches were placed. That list will tell you everything.

The 1:8 vs 1:20 Student-to-Chef Ratio Compounds Over a Decade

At a 1:20 student-to-chef ratio, each student gets roughly 3 minutes of individual feedback per hour of class. At a 1:8 ratio, they get 7–8 minutes. That sounds modest. But across six months of training, the difference is approximately 50–60 hours of direct, personal technical feedback versus 20–25 hours. Those extra 30 hours of mentored practice in your foundational year create skill differences that are still visible five years into your career.

For a detailed breakdown of the best professional baking institutes in India and what differentiates them, see our guide to the best baking institutes in India. For a full breakdown of what you're actually paying for at each price point, see our pastry chef course fees guide.

The Business Module Is Not Optional — Even at the Training Stage

One of the most consistent observations from executive pastry chefs when asked what they wish they had learned earlier: business fundamentals. Recipe costing, pricing strategy, menu engineering, COGS management — these are skills that most chefs do not formally encounter until they are promoted to a level where those skills are already expected. The training programmes that integrate business education into the culinary curriculum are preparing you for levels 4, 5, and 6 before you even begin level 1.

This is not a nice-to-have feature in a training programme. It is a career accelerator. Chefs who arrive at their first CDP position already understanding food cost percentage have an immediate advantage over those who are learning it for the first time. That advantage compounds at every subsequent level.

The Eggless Competency That Most Programmes Skip

India is home to the world's largest vegetarian population. A significant portion of the non-vegetarian population avoids eggs for religious or cultural reasons. The wedding cake market, the festival gifting market, the corporate hospitality market — all of these have enormous demand for eggless products. Pastry chefs who cannot produce excellent eggless results are locked out of a substantial portion of the market opportunity.

Yet the vast majority of professional pastry programmes in India — including expensive ones — treat eggless baking as an afterthought, a few recipe variations at the end of a traditionally egg-based curriculum. A programme that builds eggless competency into its foundation — so that every product you learn, from tarts to entremets to laminated pastry, is mastered in both egg and eggless versions — gives you a career advantage that is immediately visible to employers and clients.

Executive Pastry Chef Lifestyle: What the Day Actually Looks Like

It would be dishonest not to address this directly. The Instagram version of the executive pastry chef life — beautiful showpieces, artful plated desserts, serene kitchen moments — is real, but it represents perhaps 20% of a typical day. Understanding the actual lifestyle before committing 12 years to reaching it is both respectful of your time and useful for your planning.

The Morning: Production and Operations

A typical morning for an executive pastry chef at a five-star hotel begins early — often 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM. The day starts with a walk-through of the pastry kitchen and patisserie display: checking that overnight production is complete and up to standard, reviewing the day's mise en place schedule against expected cover counts, and addressing any quality issues before service begins. There are briefings with the sous chef and CDP on the day's events — breakfasts, lunches, wedding tastings, evening banquets.

For perhaps two hours in the morning, the executive is doing actual hands-on pastry work: developing a new menu item, perfecting a technique for an upcoming event, working on a showpiece for a competition or hotel showcase. This is the time many executives protect most fiercely. It is also the time that gets compressed first when operational demands increase.

The Midday: Meetings, Numbers, and Management

By midmorning, the executive is typically in the first of several meetings. These may include: a cost review with the F&B controller, a new vendor presentation, a cross-departmental briefing on an upcoming event, a one-on-one with the sous chef on team performance, or a tasting for a menu change with the F&B director. None of this involves baking. All of it requires the full attention and business literacy of someone managing a significant operational budget.

The afternoon may include: reviewing purchase orders, responding to vendors, approving or revising the following week's production plan, interviewing a candidate for the commis vacancy, checking in on a junior chef who needs coaching, and preparing for an evening event. On the day of a large wedding or gala dinner, the executive may return to the kitchen for the final hours of preparation and service — but equally often, the sous chef runs service while the executive handles a client meeting or a media inquiry.

The Evening and the Weekends

The hospitality industry does not observe conventional working hours. Weddings happen on weekends. Festival seasons mean month-long periods of intense volume. Major sporting or political events at the hotel create extraordinary demand. An executive pastry chef who insists on Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five availability will not be an executive pastry chef for long. The role demands genuine flexibility, and the compensation reflects that demand.

What the executive role does offer, that junior positions cannot, is agency. You decide how your team's time is allocated. You set the priorities for the week. When you need to leave early for a family event, you can — because you have built a team and a system that does not depend on your physical presence for every decision. Building that team and that system is one of the most rewarding aspects of reaching the top.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion: The Ceiling Is Higher Than You Think — And Reachable

The executive pastry chef role is the clearest proof that the Indian pastry profession has come of age. ₹1.5 lakh a month, creative authority over the pastry identity of some of India's finest hospitality brands, a team to develop and a legacy to build — this is a salaried career ceiling that compares favourably with most professional paths available to ambitious Indians in their early thirties.

It takes 10 to 15 years of intentional work to get there. It does not happen by accident, and it does not happen simply by putting in time. It happens when technical excellence meets business acumen, when personal brand is built consistently over years, when the right organisations are chosen at each stage, and when every level is used to develop the skills the next level demands before arriving at it.

The best time to start is before your career begins — specifically, in the training you choose at the very beginning. The quality of your first diploma shapes your first placement. Your first placement shapes your early trajectory. Your early trajectory establishes the network and reputation that either accelerates or constrains everything that follows. The compounding effect of a strong start is real, and the compounding effect of a weak one is equally real.

If you are serious about this career, invest in it seriously at the beginning. Choose a training programme with a strong industry placement network, a genuine 1:8 student-to-chef ratio, an integrated business curriculum, and a track record of placing graduates in the kitchens you want to work in. Arrive at your first kitchen already thinking two levels ahead. Build the skills at each level that the next level requires before you are promoted into it. Get international exposure when you can. Build your personal brand consistently.

The executive level is 12 years away for most people reading this — or 8 if you are strategic. That is a career, not a shortcut. But it is a career with a clear ceiling, a clear map, and enough room for both craft and ambition. That combination is rarer than it looks.

For more on building your pastry career in India, read our full guide to the pastry chef career in India, our breakdown of current pastry chef salaries at every level, and our advice on what to look for in a professional pastry training programme.