Anthony Smith

My childhood was forged at the neighborhood bakery in my native country of Trinidad and Tobago. Growing up in the Caribbean, I was very involved in just about anything recreational, from sports to television. However, it was the bakery (directly across the street from where I lived) that first opened the door to my creative side. At the age of seven I started hanging out at the bakery just to see how things were being made.

One day, the head baker asked if I would like to try my hand at forming some dough. This was the beginning of a lifelong love. I would now spend most of my free time at the bakery, and each time I showed up the bakers would give me dough and allow me to shadow them. For me, it was just fun. Little did I know that I was actually learning what would turn out to be valuable skills. I learned quickly, and by the time I was eight I was scaling, mixing, fermenting, shaping, and baking bread on my own. I was very proud of my skills, but I still considered it to be just fun, something to do in my spare time. Never, not even once, did I think I would be a professional baker or pastry chef - not even when the owner of the bakery told me that baking was my calling in life. I wanted to be a pilot (boy was I far off).