It can’t be denied the immense skills and knowledge of our industry’s teachers plays a huge role in shaping the future of the baking industry.  In this edition of Baking Business we speak to teachers about what first attracted them to the work.

Alice Fogarty, Teacher Patisserie and Bakery, William Angliss Institute

Alice Fogarty

When and why did you decide to join the baking industry?

When I was young, I loved eating cakes and croissants. I grew up with my grandparents being in the Paterson’s Cakes era and they would get their parties catered with the little iced fancies and their buttery pastries. So my main inspiration was the amazing and delicious food and wanting to try create it myself.

I did an apprenticeship – well I started and then stopped. I started after high school, and it was a hard life – waking up early, and no weekends and I found it quite isolating so I quit. I went overseas and travelled for a few years working different jobs, when I came back to Melbourne I decided, ‘You know what? Yeah, I do want to be a baker.’

I was a bit older, so I found it easier and really enjoyed it. I had a good first job with a great boss and just loved attending William Angliss Institute once a week for my schooling.

What has your career involved?

I did my apprenticeship, then kind of moved on to a few different bakeries around Melbourne. I kept pestering the bakeries I really liked, until I got a job there.

I started teaching at William Angliss Institute in 2014 as a casual and worked at Let Them Eat Cake, which was in South Melbourne. I was a casual teacher for quite a few years, while still working in the industry. I really loved the combination of the hands-on aspect and working in industry.

What did this new career path involve?

When I fell pregnant with my first child, I thought it was time to pursue a teaching career. After my daughter was born I went back to study. I was still in contact with two of my favourite teachers from William Angliss Institute and they were encouraging me to get into teaching. I went back, did my studies, then got my first job at The Institute and I continue to study whenever they released some more steps. I completed my diploma, and then did the Graduate Certificate during Covid lockdown. I’m always studying and wanting to grow.

What do you love about teaching?

I love seeing my students start out quite young and watching them grow over the three or four years that they attend William Angliss Institute.

A lot of my apprentices enter competitions. One of my school apprentices [Ryan Wu] won the Bake Skills in Melbourne in 2024. It was so great to watch him and see him come up and win that. I am also a judge at the annual Great Aussie Pie Competition, which is held at the same time and location. So while I was judging, I was able to watch him at the next stall down doing the competition.

Do you have a piece of advice for new apprentices?

Never stop learning. Just soak up all you can. I think it’s really important to have a mentor; someone that you look up to or that you’re inspired by.

Christean Ng, Patisserie teacher, Le Cordon Bleu Melbourne

Christean Ng

Why did you decide to join the baking industry?

In a beautiful way, the baking industry came to me whilst I was in the midst of completing my Bachelor Degree in Business Law. It was not something planned but instead became an interest on the side while I was still deciding on what my future holds.

I was fortunate enough to meet a friend, who was then doing his apprenticeship with NOBU here in Melbourne. He was the one that directed me the pathway into the industry. To this day, I am very grateful to him, or I would never have found the one thing that truly makes me happy. That was 18 years ago.

What was it that attracted you to it? What were your early years like?

In my opinion, I think you need to be somewhat crazy to want to be a chef. It is not a secret that this industry is not open enough to disclose all the tremendous physicality involved in it, not to mention the long arduous hours of labour each day.

I would have to say the things that attracted me the most with patisserie is that I am a designer, creator, artist and chef all at the same time. And I get to make beautiful desserts!

The start of my journey in the industry was fantastic and I really must thank my mentor Tim Clark from Cacao Fine Chocolate. I strongly believe that your mentor is what builds you as a chef. If you have a good mentor that manages you well and supports you unconditionally, you are likely to become one as well.

Can you tell us a bit about your career and any significant milestones?

Whenever I think about the journey in my career, I am always quite shocked with how patient I was as I was working towards achieving my goals. I am a simple individual. Pastry was the only thing in my life that somewhat unlocked that inner peace I never thought existed, which ultimately makes the difficult part of my journey seems all worthwhile.

Why did you decide to become a teacher? What’s the most rewarding part of the job?

Most of my journey in my pastry career happened by chance. I never make plans, I knew what I wanted to do, and that was it.

My first job as an apprentice was with Tim Clark at Cacao Fine Chocolate, and with my head chef Jordan Schrader, who was patient and kind to share his knowledge. As I progressed I took the next step in my career with Andre Reis, who then owned Chez Dre in South Melbourne. He taught me a lot about discipline. Then it was working with Darren Purchese who gave me the opportunity to run the chocolate department at Burch and Purchese and allowed me to have the freedom to create. This is the time where the possibility of becoming a teacher stemmed from. Then, I had the opportunity to work under the Chocolate Queen Kirsten Tibballs from Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School and be inspired even more. Every chef I met is a big piece in me. They all built me like a puzzle.

When I was promoted as a Head Chocolatier at Burch and Purchese, I was not only given the opportunity to be creative, I was also given the task as a mentor to others. I had Tim Clark in mind when I was training my very first apprentice. I used the same approach to motivate and inspire [them].

It was a humble experience to be part of someone’s journey, and that is what inspired me to teach. Teaching allows me to navigate the lost to the right path, inspire their potential to greater things beyond their belief and hopefully be the root to their success in their future endeavours. It is very rewarding and at the same time difficult to explain.

What’s the best piece of wisdom you can offer a student?

Stay humble and be respectful. Always remember where you came from when you first embarked into the unknown.

Paul Triglau, Baking and Patisserie Lecturer, Regency TAFESA

Paul Triglau

Take us back to the beginning about your early days in the industry.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I completely fell into it. My family have owned a bakery for forever and a day – and still do. In my final year of school there was no way I was ever going to enter the food industry, because I saw how hard my father worked.

My parents are Italian immigrants and they worked their absolute arses off. All the way through my schooling I helped out, but I then went to university and had no intention of actually going into the bakery. I went overseas for a little bit and came back and I really didn’t enjoy my career. I was working in allied health.

When I came back I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so by default I ended up working at the bakery and ended up just loving it. I was 22 or 23, and I was ready. I was very science based, and I really enjoy baking because it’s that perfect kind of like crossover between science, art and skill.

Where did you go from there?

I had skills from working at the bakery, so I worked for the family and did my apprenticeship through them. I’ve always been someone that likes to get really good at things. After working in the bakery for 10 years I got the chance to do some tournament baking.

When I did some tournament baking I saw how high the bar could be. It exposed me to an extremely high level of baking and then I got the bug and just really devoted myself to that.

It really inspired me, and at that point I just became incredibly ambitious and wanted to reach those levels.

What were your next steps?

I was lucky because in that international baking scene once you’re in it, you’re really in it. I got asked to represent Australia in one team, and we did surprisingly well. So then it led to another one and another one and another one. I’d always been ambitious to actually try and learn as much as I could within bakery. I was mainly bread and Viennoiserie, but once I got the bug I tried to venture into other areas like chocolate and sugar. It became almost like a bit of an obsession to actually try and learn as much as I could.

How did you step into the role of teaching, and why did you join Regency TAFESA?

In the family bakery a lot of the products were a bit more generic. So I opened a smaller, independent bakery where we tried to do a bit of everything. I loved that, and then I got a call from TAFESA one day to ask if I could do some part-time teaching. I did, and ended up loving it.

For two years I actually combined teaching and running the business but it just got too much. I realised I had to prioritise one over the other, and I ended up really enjoying teaching.

When you are in a bakery you get very good at what you make in the bakery, but it’s difficult to have a massive range because you often don’t have the staff that can actually do it. With the bakery I really wanted to make everything from chocolates to breads to pizzas to croissants to cake to petit gateaux. We tried to do that, but it became difficult.

The great thing about teaching is you actually get to make all those things. One week I’ll be teaching sausage rolls, and next week I’ll be teaching sourdough breads and the next sweet yeast, and the next week I’ll be teaching a chocolate showpiece class.

With teaching you also have to really break down tasks. You really have to know your area inside out, back to front, so you can help to troubleshoot the students. Teaching was also a way for me to broaden my scope, I suppose, and to get really elite in a lot of different areas. I became passionate about inspiring the next generation as well.

I’ve been there for 13 or 14 years – I never thought that I’d ever stay for that long. But it’s really nice when you hit stage I’m at now where we’re starting to see our graduates open places and leading the industry. That’s really satisfying.

You were awarded the Dr Susan Nelle Churchill Fellowship in 2019, and in 2023 studied at Ecole Ducasse in France and ALMA the School of Italian Culinary Arts in Italy. How was this experience?

I don’t think in terms of accolades, but there are three things that have leapfrogged my development. The third was when I represented Australia on a team, along with Brett Noy, that went to Italy to compete at Sigep. We did that one two years running and we came third.

From there I was asked to do another big international competition, the Mondial du Pain. I competed twice, and then after that they asked me back to be a jury member. Then, in 2023, which is the same year when I went on the Churchill Fellowship, they asked me to be the head judge, which is a great experience as well.

In 2019 I applied for a Churchill Fellowship and I got it, but then COVID hit, which meant that I didn’t actually get around to it until 2023.

At TAFE we started running Italian-themes short courses, and my background is Italian, and we found there were a lot of people wanting to learn Italian-specific things like cannolis, sfogliatelle, Italian bread, and gelati. But there was no real teaching component at any of the TAFEs that catered for that. So I applied for a fellowship based around learning Italian high end patisserie.

The Alma School and Ecole Ducasse in Italy and France are the two schools that are the best in the world for patisserie. They’ve never worked together but in 2023 formed a joint program and what’s called the Advanced Diploma in French and Italian Patisserie.

They did a big lecturer swap between the two schools for the 10-week program. It was the first year it had been run and there were only seven of us. Every single module was being taught by like a world champion. The level of teaching was just like extraordinary.

My idea, which is still to take fruition, is to actually embed some of those products and skills in our current curriculum.

What’s the best piece of wisdom that you could offer a student?

I’ve always thought the best quality for a young baker or pastry chef to have is to be able to self critique their work. To admire it when it’s good, but then to also really try and break down how it can be better. Aim really high. You will enjoy the rewards of your work a lot more when you push yourself.

Stuart Hawke, Teacher Bakery and Patisserie, TAFENSW

Stuart Hawke

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

I’ve just turned 50 and I have been happily married to my wife, Annette, for 25 years and have three very beautiful adult girls.

I wanted to be a chef when I left school; I have always had a passion for food. I moved out of home at 17 and worked through year 11 and 12 in Canberra.

A mate of mine joined the army after year 12.  He had worked as a baker through school and was working with Woolworths in the bakery at the time. He asked me if I’d like to take over from him, so I got trained and within three days I was running doughs on my own.

It was a sink or swim situation. I don’t think the bread was that great in those early days, as I was learning as I worked, but I certainly produced a lot of product. I had learnt about quantity, but not quality.

How did that lead on to you deciding to become a baker?

I did about three-and-a-half years in Canberra as a baker with Woolworths. I was pretty wild when I was young and had a fairly tough home life, so I didn’t have a lot of interest in it. It was just a job and it paid me well. I had negotiated to be paid as a tradesman very early on because they were short-staffed.

I didn’t actually do an apprenticeship, although it was offered. I didn’t want to give up my higher wages. I worked in a few different Woolworths in Canberra. I became a Christian when I was 22 and requested a transfer to Tamworth to make some big changes in how I was living my life. Unfortunately there was no position, so I resigned  and moved to Tamworth regardless, because my sister and brother-in-law were there. I moved up jobless and hopeful of finding work.

I got a start in a small bakery called Baker’s Bun, but it wasn’t the right environment. I then moved into working at Buttercup in a plant-baking scenario. Within 12 months I was running a plant line of bread roll production and the plant manager helped me get a craft certification. I then up-skilled into the bread line and running that line of production.

After three-and-a-half years I was eager for more opportunity and went back to Woolworths to possibly get into management. I spent three weeks working two jobs – 3pm until 12am at Buttercup, then midnight until 8am at Woolworths as I transitioned over.  In the first 12 months I was promoted and they put me into a Certificate III in Retail Management Program and I quickly became the second in charge of the bakery at Woolworths.

Within the next 15 months, I was managing that bakery with 16-18 staff. I managed that for four years. It was a high production bakery, and I had first, second, third and fourth year apprentices at the time. I really enjoyed training staff and seeing them develop into tradesmen, so that sparked my interest in the actual transferring of skills and education.

In that period between Buttercup and Woolworths I decided to advance my education and skills in the trade. I also started my own catering business in 2006, and returned to Buttercup to work four-days-a-week while I built up my business.

In 2008 I met Matthew McAllister at a trade show. We got talking to one another and clicked straight away. He encouraged me to consider becoming a teacher.  I’d never even thought about teaching, but he said, ‘well, if it interests you, come and have a chat’. So I made an appointment with Matt and discussed what was involved. He was very helpful and has turned into one of the best mentors/bosses and friends that I have ever had.

I started the process. I got trade tested by the head teacher and Matt at the TAFE – I did a seven-hour exam with theory/ recipe writing and practical. They offered  me a start as a casual teacher on probation. I then had to complete a Certificate IIII in trading and assessing. Matt mentored me into the position of casual bakery teacher. From there I have trained and further educated into the full time position as commercial cookery, bakery/patisserie and hospitality teacher.

How were your first few months – and years – of teaching?

It was a huge learning curve and heavy load as I was working three jobs, I was a studying my Certificate IIII and had a young family, but I had a really good mentor in Matt. I was doing about one to two classes a month at that stage while running my business and working four-days-a-week at Buttercup. I transitioned to teaching one to two days per week. By 2013/14, Matt went into a different role, and I took over the running for the New England bakery section by about 2015-16.

As far as teaching goes I’ve had a fantastic experience with it. I really enjoy the different cohorts that come through, the different students, young adults and some mature age [students] that have become bakers.

What is the most rewarding part of being a teacher for you?

For me, it’s getting the students through to completion and seeing their skills become polished and complete. We’ve got our capstone week that they do and the students really enjoy that final event. Once they’ve completed this they know their TAFE experience is finished and they’re close to being qualified. The relationships and friendships that have been built over the course of their training is very rewarding.

What’s the best piece of wisdom you could offer a student?

When opportunities arise, and when something’s presented  to up-skill, educate and test yourself, take those opportunities – go outside your comfort zone. Don’t let fear of failure or anxiety stop you from achieving greater goals and ambition.