Region: Mystic pastry chef to vie for prestigious title on Food Network

Sift Bake Shop owner Adam Young will appear on Food Network’s ‘Best Baker in America’

A Mystic baker is one of nine pastry chefs across the country competing on the upcoming season of “Best Baker in America,” premiering on the Food Network on May 7.

Adam Young, owner and head pastry chef at Sift Bake Shop, is used to working with dough but is hoping to bring home dough of a different kind: $25,000. Every penny counts for Adam and his wife, Ebbie, as they prepare to open a second Sift location, in Watch Hill.

The filming of season two of “Best Baker in America” took place over two weeks in Los Angeles in February, Young said, but he can’t share the outcome. One pastry chef will be sent home each week of the season, with the finale airing June 18.

This is not Young’s first time competing on a Food Network show.

He was one of nine contestants on “Spring Baking Championship,” which aired in 2017. He was one of three to make it to the finale but did not win.

Young said that while the two shows have a similar format, the products and techniques chefs are using on “Best Baker in America” are “much, much more advanced.”

“This show is very reminiscent of what we do here at Sift, so there’s a lot of really modern techniques,” he said. Young added, “Something that was kind of significant to this show

is that it did a lot of twists on the classics, which I love.”

He commented that cooking in a Food Network studio kitchen is very different from cooking in a normal commercial kitchen. For example, you don’t know where anything is.

“You’re out of what’s typically a very controlled environment, and they put you into something that is anything but controlled,” he said with a laugh.

The host of “Best Baker in America” is Scott Conant, a Connecticut-born chef who previously has appeared as a judge on “Top Chef” and “Chopped.” The judges are Jason Smith and Marcela Valladolid.

The other pastry chefs competing on this season are Becca Craig of Philadelphia, Kym DeLost of Chicago, Jeremy Fogg of New Orleans, Frania Mendivil of Los Angeles, Leigh Omilinsky of Chicago, Lasheeda Perry of Atlanta, Max Santiago of Miami and Jean-Francois Suteau of White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.