Pastry chefs rising stars of the culinary world

SAN FRANCISCO — Not too long ago, the pastry chef was a bit of an afterthought.

Sure, there was tiramisu and molten lava chocolate cake. But, for the most part, kitchen celebrity was measured by thrills at the grill, not by teaspoonfuls of baking soda.

That's changed.

Artisan cupcakes are everywhere, Bravo TV's "Top Chef" is spinning off a show "Top Chef: Just Desserts," and TLC has "Cake Boss." Then there's Food Network's "Ace of Cakes," following the adventures of Duff Goldman as he and his crew whip up such concoctions as Viking ship wedding cakes, detailed right down to the breaking waves.

Pastry chefs are the rising stars of the culinary world.

"There's definitely a lot of interest," says Peter Reinhart, baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and author of five books on bread baking, including "The Bread Bakers Apprentice." At Johnson & Wales, one of the nation's leading culinary schools, "we sell out our baking and pastry program faster than any other program, and that tells us a lot."

Dorie Greenspan, author of "Baking: From My Home to Yours," thinks blogging has helped shine a spotlight on sweets. There are cake bloggers, cookie bloggers, macaron bloggers. "There's just been a lot more news about what's going on in the sweet world."

Meanwhile, baking books like "Hello, Cupcake!" and "What's New, Cupcake?" — in which authors Karen Tack and Alan Richardson instruct home bakers on how to concoct everything from corn on the cob to rubber duckies from simple cupcakes — are making a splash.

"There's a real excitement," says Greenspan.

On the dining side, restaurant pastry chefs even are winning their own followings, people like Johnny Iuzzini, executive pastry chef at Restaurant Jean Georges in New York, and Sherry Yard, executive pastry chef at Spago in Beverly Hills, Calif.

And as a result, some pastry chefs are striking out on their own, taking flour power to the streets.

"Pastry chefs are leaving the restaurant kitchen for whatever reason — family, burnout, becoming entrepreneurs — and many of them are opening their own small business," says Kara Nielsen, a "trendologist" at the San Francisco-based Center for Culinary Development.