Pastry Chef Vs Baker: The Difference Explained

Whether you are considering a career in baking, or just curious about the job titles you see at your favorite restaurant, you may be wondering about the difference between a pastry chef and a baker. You might think that it's simply a semantic difference coming from people who think the term baker isn't fancy enough for them, but while there is certainly overlap between the job descriptions for each, the two really are not the same. Baker is a more general, less professional title, one used in many bakeries but also just as applicable to someone who bakes at home. Pastry chef is much more specific, and is a title you really have to earn in a professional environment.

The distinction comes from the classic division of labor in French kitchens, which was codified by the famous chef Georges-Auguste Escoffier and is where we got many of the professional titles of today. In these cases, the title "chef" of any kind is a professional one, reserved for people in advanced roles and positions of authority — and pastry chef is no exception. While the larger kitchen may be run by an executive chef and a sous chef, individual stations that produce specific styles of food also have chefs that oversee them, and this is where the title pastry chef originates. Bakers can still be professionals, of course, but they are either lower level positions, or less specialized in what they produce.

A pastry chef will also go by the name pâtissier, similar to other titles in the kitchen like saucier, designating the chef that heads the development and production of that part of the menu. For a chef in a professional kitchen, that means making different types of pastries, and more generally, desserts. This title can also apply to bakers in pastry shops as well. So beyond being a position of authority, it also usually excludes most savory baked goods like bread, and might include sweet items that are not really baked, like ice creams. 

Being the head of dessert production in a kitchen also means pastry chefs play a large role in creating and conceptualizing the menu. They can be tasked with developing new recipes themselves, researching new ideas, and testing them until they are perfect. Pastry chefs are also usually responsible for the meticulous preparation and plating of desserts to make sure they're beautiful. However, in larger kitchens, some of these roles may be delegated out from an executive pastry chef to lower ranking ones. It's a position that mixes leadership with the technical skill of making pastries.

Being a baker involves a wider variety of roles in different places, unified only by the skill of baking itself. Bakers can work in professional kitchens under a pastry chef, but usually making other people's recipes, not developing their own. They can also work at smaller bakeries or even in factories and production kitchens. In general, even in less formal roles, being a baker usually means you are not the boss, and you're doing work directed by someone else. While the role will vary depending on where they work, bakers will usually be expected to produce simpler things in a higher volume. That means they won't have the same precise decorating responsibilities that a pastry chef will, although they may be given less demanding tasks like frosting cakes.

Because it's a more general term, bakers will make a lot of things pastry chefs normally wouldn't, like bread or savory pies and tarts. But they also won't work with some non-baked sweet things that pastry chefs do, like making chocolates or sorbets. In general, a good guide — beyond thinking of pastry chefs as a higher-level position — is to think of things you would find in a shop called a bakery, which may cover a wide range of products, versus what you would see in a patisserie, with all its intricate and specific desserts. One isn't really "better" than the other, they just cater to people looking for slightly different things.