Baking and Pastry Arts – Artisan Baking

Vancouver Community College’s Artisan Baking program provides students with the skills and knowledge necessary to excel in the world of professional baking. With a strong emphasis on traditional baking techniques and high-quality ingredients, the program prepares students to create a wide variety of artisanal baked goods, from breads and pastries to cakes and desserts. Students gain hands-on experience with essential bakery equipment and develop expertise in everything from mixing and shaping dough to fermentation, laminating dough, and mastering techniques for pies, tarts, and more.

Admission Requirements

• Successful completion of Grade 10 or higher.
• BC Foodsafe Certificate Level 1.

What You’ll Learn

• Master health, sanitation, and safety protocols while using bakery equipment like scales, mixers, proofers, and ovens.
• Develop knife skills and understand theoretical baking principles, ingredients, and methodologies for various baked goods.
• Learn techniques for making biscuits, muffins, pie dough, straight dough, and various aeration and emulsification methods.
• Gain expertise in baking cookies, pies, tarts, cakes, sponges, buttercreams, glazes, and ganaches, including dessert plating and presentation.
• Master lamination techniques for croissants, Danish, and puff dough, along with the preparation of pastries, slices, squares, quickbreads, and loaf cakes.
• Understand fermentation, leavening, gluten development, wild yeast, and starters like sourdough, biga, and poolish for hearth baking and other bread styles.
• Learn gluten-free baking, meat and vegetable pies, Asian buns, tarts, pita breads, flatbreads, and sandwiches while focusing on consistency and accuracy.
• Develop skills in production planning, retail bakeshop management, troubleshooting, cost control, inventory management, catering, and effective communication.