What is a Chef with Andris Lagsdin of Baking Steel

Welcome to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. I'm your host Chris spear. On the show. I have conversations with culinary entrepreneurs and people in the food and beverage industry who took a different route. Their caterers, research chefs, personal chefs cookbook authors, food truckers, farmers, cottage bakers, and all sorts of culinary renegades. I myself fall into the personal chef category as I started my own personal chef business perfect little bites 11 years ago. And while I started working in kitchens in the early 90s, I've literally never worked in a restaurant. Hey, everyone, I hope you're having a great week. So this week, I have a quick mini episode, and the show will be coming right up after word from this week's sponsor. COVID has redefined the world of dining. While the pandemic certainly upended the restaurant experience, the personal chef industry experienced record growth. The United States personal chef Association represents nearly 1000 chefs around the US and Canada and even Italy. USPCA provides a strategic backbone that includes liability insurance, training, communications, certification and more. It's a reassurance to consumers that the chef coming into their home is prepared to offer them an experience along with their meal. USPCA annual conference is scheduled for July 7 to 10th at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, Florida. For those who supply the industry it's a chance to reach decision makers and the actual buyers of products. USPCA is currently seeking exhibitors. If you're interested in reaching the decision makers and consumer culinary influencers, this is your show. Please get in touch with Angela at 1-800-955-2138 extension 705 for your custom exhibitor package today. This will be the first time back following the COVID lockdowns and chefs are anxious to connect with industry suppliers. And now on with the show. Thanks so much and have a great week. One of the questions I've been asking recently is what does it mean to you to be a chef and then follow up? Do you identify at all as a chef?

I think people more people identify me as a chef than I ever was a chef, I worked in kitchens, and I worked under some great chefs, I was still in my younger days working with like Todd and other incredible chefs. So I didn't really identify myself as a chef. People do because of my background. I was kind of working up the ranks, if you will, I still look at cooking like life. If I'm building pizzas, for example, and I'm making my dough, I call it the ME simplus. Right, we all get near shit together before. So if I if you come over to my home for dinner tonight, and we're having pizza, well, I've got all my ingredients prepped up and ready to go. I have got a really clean workstation, by the way too, because I've cleaned up everything I clean as I go. So when you come to my home to cook with me, everything's ready. My workstation now is not necessarily always going to be food related. But it's my it's my life. And my, my desk is clean, and I'm ready to rock and roll. And it's a clean environment. And I guess that's kind of important, like, so the Mason plus is like a metaphor for life. That's and that's really what it is. It's like you're my kids who build with Legos, right? They'll you can't just take the directions out and start building. Now you gotta take the packages, open, open the package up, spread out all your tools, maybe try to organize them first. Now we can open the directions up and start to read and put these things together efficiently. By the way, and I'm sure you have to Chris, I've done a bunch of videos. And I have not had my recent class done completed, right. And that's the worst feeling in the world where and we're talking every even details as far as having, you know, that cup of water, that spatula, handy, the towel, the side towel, all these things, if you don't have that stuff in front of you for a video, you're now you're out of frame, going to get that stuff and especially if you're doing this in a COVID environment where you're by yourself. And you're like, Ah, I guess I forgot to shred my cheese or whatever it might be a again, just like a metaphor like life. It's like you've and that's something I've always carried with me. And it's not always perfect by any means. But before I I sit down to do something, I've I've got my my stuff with me that I need, I think to help me through this process. And clean too. By the way. You notice a lot of amateur cooks or amateur Handyman in your house or whatever they might be doing. Arts organized some time you're like, oh, that's tough, you know, gotta be organized and clean and throughout the process. So that way we come back the next day by going to make pizza again, I can start with a clean slate. I'm not spending two hours cleaning first, right?

Making pizza every day. Sure sounds like a goal to me.

That wouldn't be bad, right? That's that's a nice thing.

Go to chefswithoutrestaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and Chef database. The community's free to join. You'll get gig opportunities, advice on building and growing Your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast Have a great week