Baker

On a baker apprenticeship course, you will produce, prepare, label, and label items according to specified standards. These bakery products encompass various categories, such as bread (including buns/rolls, enriched doughs, and loaves), pastries (comprising croissants, Danish pastries, puff pastries, and tarts), and confectionery (encompassing cakes, cupcakes, muffins, and Swiss rolls).

Depending on your specialisation, you may help craft a single item or diverse bakery products. You will use various tools and equipment, diligently maintaining and inspecting them. Ensuring thorough bakery documentation and records, including compliance checks, is crucial.

You will also help contribute to material and stock management, uphold a sanitary production environment, and actively enhance products and processes.

What you’ll learn

On a baker apprenticeship course, you’ll learn to:

• Examine consumer demands and current industry trends and their impact on the bakery sector.
• Explore the principles of baking theory, encompassing mixing, proving, retarding, resting, baking, and cooling processes, along with their functions and influence on product quality.
• Formulate essential recipes for bakery products.
• Investigate bakery methods and processes, including weighing, mixing, dividing, proving, shaping, scaling, blocking/forming, baking, fry-off, pre-bake, cooling, and finishing, while understanding their requirements and purposes.
• Delve into bakery equipment, such as various mixer types, processing equipment, ovens, hotplates, knives, packaging, and labelling tools, their applications, cleaning procedures, and operational check requirements.
• Analyse key bakery ingredients like flour, yeast, salt, sugar, fats, improvers, water, and eggs, including their origins, properties, nutritional value, uses, grades, quality, interactions, storage, handling, and transportation.
• Grasp dough-making principles encompass changes in physical properties during processing and the types suitable for different products, including bulk fermentation and no-time doughs (Chorleywood bread process).
• Understand the requirements for finished baked products, including packaging, labelling, storage, handling, and transportation.
• Maximise product yield efficiency and minimise waste generation.
• Address bakery-related legislation, regulations, and requirements, such as Food Safety, Allergen control, Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP), labelling, acrylamide, and issues related to bakery-related asthmagens (powders) and flour dust.
• Comprehend workplace safety standards, including the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, Control of Substances Hazardous to Health, risk assessments, method statements, manual handling, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and standard operating procedures.
• Focus on environmental considerations, including the Environmental Protection Act 1990, sustainable resource usage, and recycling practices.
• Establish hygiene protocols encompassing personal hygiene standards and bakery-specific cleanliness practices.
• Identify common baking faults and challenges and develop problem-solving skills.

Entry requirements

• Level 2 apprenticeships don’t require any formal qualifications. If you don’t already have GCSEs in English and maths, you will need to take functional skills as part of the apprenticeship
  

Assessment methods

The programme is assessed in various ways before completing the End Point Assessment including observation with questions, interview underpinned by a portfolio of evidence and multiple-choice test.

Restrictions and requirements

• Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this level prior to taking the end-point assessment.

Duration, level, subjects and potential salary upon completion