Michael - The Wild Bunch Baker

I am a former Pastry Chef and Baker that now enjoys making creation for friends and family.  I started my culinary desires in high school.  I was introduced to commercial baking through a course offered by the County of Santa Cruz.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and I quickly excelled.  I took any class I could get into to learn about baking and pastries.  I remember how it killed my wrestling coach when I left practice early for an advanced chocolates class at the community college; leaving wrestling for chocolate.  Oh Yeah!

I started working professionally at Gayle’s Bakery in Capitola during my sophomore year.  Louisa Beers and Gayle were an inspiration.  I worked there through High School.  I then joined the Army to afford Culinary School, I had big dreams of Cordon Bleu in Paris.  The Government and Life quickly derailed those dreams as I was not able to a cook in the Army.  I continued to work at Gayle’s as a Holiday Support Baker.  I would come in and crank out pies and pastries for the Holiday season.

I finished my first tour with the Army and started work at Pebble Beach as a Pastry Chef for the Inn and Links at Spanish Bay.  I continued to excel and learn more techniques from Executive Chef Pascal, and Pastry Chef Donna.  I worked through a Pebble Beach Pro Am Golf Tournament where I blew out my right thumb tendon making over 10,000 profiteroles.  A pastry chef that cannot use a pastry bag is pretty much done in the industry.

I started my Army career in earnest and continued to recover my tendon while I served as an Infantry Drill Sergeant.  Throughout my Army career I continued to learn new techniques for desserts and experimented with various yeast based dough’s.  I retired from the Army in 2010, after a deployment to Kosovo.  While in Kosovo I had the chance to visit with Albanian, Greek, Turkish, Italian, German, French and Slovakian Bakers to see how they made their baked goods.  It was truly a learning experience.

I now live in Vallejo with my lovely family learning and enjoying how to take an average cake and make it extraordinary.  We are also making whole wheat stone ground sourdough using the Bale Grist Mill flour and Central Milling in Pleasanton.  If you are interested in having a culinary experience on the Wild Side drop us a line and we may take the project on, either way it will be amazing.