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Article: The Sweet Life? You Gotta Be A Little Nuts To Be a Pastry Chef
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- September 18, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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The life of a pastry chef is not a piece of cake. Ask Nancy
Ring. She spent six months flat on her back in bed after rupturing a
disk hauling a 50-pound bag of flour up a flight of stairs. Her
forearms had matching ladder-tracks of burns from hot pans, her
fingertips were constantly dark from working with chocolate and her
feet hurt from having to stand 12 hours a day.
"People think being a pastry chef is such a dainty job," she
says. "They think you're back there in a cool room, decorating
cakes, when in fact you're trying to make 20 mousse cakes before the
restaurant opens, and six dozen corn muffins have burned and you
have to do them all over again, and the chef is screaming at ...