gender & pastry chefs

[paulraphael]

You know its nonsense and I know its nonsense, but talk to those French and Italian super-star chefs that even today will not allow women into their kitches except as pastry or dessert chefs.  Sheesh......

Yeah, I'm convinced it's nonsense. I think it's a mix of what Colicchio said, and the deeply ingrained prejudices in kitchens, and the negative psychological environment this creates for a lot of women. I have female friends who were line cooks. I never heard a peep out of them about the hard work, long hours, heat, or chaos, but I got an earful about how they were treated by some of the borderline cro-magnon men in the kitchen.

As an aside, my passtime besides cooking is alpine mountaineering, which often involves 24 hour-plus days, covering multiple thousands of feet of vertical elevation in technical terrain, with nearly constant fear of rockfall, storms, and the ill effects of gravity. These are days that would leave any of my macho cook friends unconscious and with poop in their pants. But I've had my ass kicked--hard--by more female climbers than I care to count.

It's true that at the elite levels male athletes in most sports edge out female ones. But I don't believe any of these line cooks who say the girls can't hang are operating on anything near an elite level of athleticism.

[divina]

When I went into food professionally, I chose pastry too.

Looking in the kitchen was how I decided. I was working in a 5 star hotel in San Francisco, in 1979. It was a very "French" kitchen.

Lots of men - lots of yelling. The women in the kitchen were the salad and veggie prep, and the only other place I saw to go where I could create a future ( and not get yelled at) was pastry.

HOURS?- our shop closed from 2am to 4am to be cleaned.

We baked our own croissants,breakfast breads, muffins, cookies plus desserts for two in house restaurants and banquet service as well as room service.

I always thought that the men in the kitchen were great at tweeking a sauce, but the preciseness of pastry was more for gay men and women. ( where I worked)

Looking at the pastry teams, mostly men, again stress related?

Construction? pulling sugar ( pain!)

who knows.