Chatham calls all baker wannabes
Chatham University’s Center for Regional Agriculture, Food and Transformation is launching a new program in summer to help train individuals who aspire to be bakers and also supply the region’s bakeries with trained employees.
The baker training program will be a 12- to 14-week course held primarily at the Community Kitchen Pittsburgh facility in Hazelwood. Students also will make site visits to other places, including Chatham’s wood-fired oven at the Eden Hall Campus in Richland. Cassandra Malis, CRAFT program manager, said the curriculum is still in development, but students will get a general overview of bread baking and possibly some pastry skills as well.
The ideal cohort size would be 15 students, she said, and the program is expected to repeat according to the Chatham semester schedule.
Community Kitchen Pittsburgh seemed like a natural partner, Ms. Malis said, because the nonprofit organization already focuses on workforce development by training individuals with barriers to employment for food service careers.
In its work with local companies, CRAFT staff has repeatedly heard that trained bakers are hard to find. A large percentage of food processors in the Pittsburgh area are bakeries, Ms. Malis said, and they expressed a need for a more concentrated workforce.
“It was a gap we thought we could help fill,” she said.
She expects the program to field a variety of applicants, including Community Kitchen Pittsburgh students who want to focus on baking, as well as Chatham University students, people who want to start their own food businesses and “anyone looking for a good job.”
The cost hasn’t yet been determined, although Community Kitchen Pittsburgh students will probably have their tuition subsidized.
CRAFT plans to help student find jobs after they complete the program. Students will have CRAFT resources at their disposal, including the Food Innovation Lab, which helps entrepreneurs with recipe testing and product development.
For students taking the class for college credit, the program will last 14 weeks. For others, it will run for 12 weeks.
Chatham will be launching a search soon for a new instructor to teach the program. And the curriculum is being developed with regional bakeries in mind, focusing the coursework on “skills they really want people to be learning” to fill positions with them, Ms. Malis said. Chatham will be working with Mediterra Bakehouse in Robinson and other large bakeries in the area.
The program is being funded by a $215,000 grant from Bank of America.
In other Chatham news, CRAFT recently announced a new food innovation lab grain program that will encourage the growing of more local grains. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Promotion Program awarded Chatham a $499,997 grant to launch it.
CRAFT has determined that more than 80 percent of the 1,300 bakers, distillers, wholesalers and other grain processors within a 200-mile radius of Pittsburgh do not source their grains locally. CRAFT plans to help processors more easily source local grains and help to develop partnerships between regional farmers, millers, bakers and other processors.
For information about either program, go to craft.chatham.edu. The “Connect” button will allow interested parties to keep in touch and receive updates.