Fermentation Manager Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

PASTRY CHEF — SCOUT

San Francisco, CA | Full-Time

Scout is a new live-fire restaurant opening in San Francisco’s Marina District, from the team behind Norcina and Frankie’s.

Rooted in California cooking, Scout is centered around the wood-fired grill, exceptional seasonal ingredients, thoughtful sourcing, and food that is refined without being fussy.

We’re looking for a talented and creative Pastry Chef to build and lead the pastry and bread program at Scout.

This is an opportunity to create a department from the ground up, from hiring and developing your team to shaping three important parts of Scout’s culinary identity: our restaurant desserts, morning pastries, and bread program.

We’re looking for someone with strong technical foundations and great instincts. Someone who understands fermentation, seasonality, restraint, texture, and the importance of starting with really good ingredients.

The program should feel connected to Scout: California-driven, seasonal, playful, and influenced by the live fire at the center of our kitchen.

Bread

We want bread to be an important part of the experience at Scout, not simply something placed on the table.

The Pastry Chef will develop and oversee our house bread program, from fermentation and production to baking and service. We’re excited about breads that can interact with our live-fire kitchen and evolve alongside the savory menu.

We’re looking for someone who understands flour, fermentation, temperature, timing, and the consistency required to produce great bread every day.

Restaurant Desserts

Our dessert menu should feel like a natural continuation of the savory menu. Seasonal, ingredient-driven, approachable, and memorable.

We’re interested in desserts that take advantage of California produce and the live-fire kitchen. Peak-season fruit, wood-roasted or caramelized elements, frozen desserts, baked goods, warm desserts for the table, and dishes that feel thoughtful without becoming overly complicated.

Morning Pastry & Coffee Service

Scout will also have a morning coffee service with a focused selection of pastries and baked goods made in-house.

We’re not looking to become a traditional bakery with dozens of items. We want a small, excellent selection of things people will genuinely come back for. Beautifully executed pastries, cakes, breads, and baked goods that feel distinctly Scout.

The Pastry Chef will be responsible for:

• Building Scout’s pastry and bread department from the ground up

• Hiring, training, scheduling, and leading the pastry team

• Developing and maintaining Scout’s house bread program

• Managing starters, fermentation, production schedules, and daily bread execution

• Developing Scout’s opening dessert menu and evolving it seasonally

• Developing the pastry and baked goods program for morning coffee service

• Establishing recipes, systems, standards, pars, and production schedules

• Exploring ways to incorporate the wood-fired grill and oven into bread, pastry, and dessert

• Working closely with seasonal California fruit, citrus, nuts, grains, herbs, dairy, chocolate, and other exceptional ingredients

• Developing ice creams, gelatos, sorbets, breads, pastries, cakes, sauces, and other pastry components

• Managing production across morning and dinner service

• Maintaining consistency and quality at restaurant volume

• Managing ordering, inventory, food cost, labor, and waste

• Training and developing pastry cooks

• Collaborating closely with the Chef de Cuisine and savory team

• Working with the beverage team on coffee service, dessert pairings, special menus, and events

• Maintaining a clean, organized, and efficient workspace

We’re looking for someone who is as excited about a perfect loaf of bread as they are about a great plated dessert.

Someone who understands the discipline required to maintain fermentation and production every day, but who also has the creativity to build a pastry program with its own point of view.

You should be equally interested in the pastry someone stops in for every Saturday morning, the bread that becomes part of a guest’s memory of dinner, and the dessert they order even though they said they were too full.

Ideal candidates will have:

• Previous Pastry Chef, Pastry Sous Chef, Head Baker, or comparable leadership experience

• Strong pastry and baking fundamentals

• Significant experience with bread, fermentation, and naturally leavened doughs

• Experience developing both plated desserts and morning pastries

• A deep appreciation for seasonal California ingredients and great grains

• Experience hiring, training, and managing a team

• Strong production planning and organizational skills

• An understanding of ordering, inventory, food cost, labor, and waste management

• The ability to manage overlapping production schedules for multiple services

• A collaborative approach to menu development

• Curiosity about live-fire cooking and how it can influence bread and pastry

• A desire to teach and develop other cooks

• Excitement about building something from the ground up

Scout is part of a growing independent San Francisco restaurant group that includes Norcina, our Italian restaurant and spritz bar, and Frankie’s, our neighborhood cocktail bar.

Scout is our next chapter: an ambitious but approachable restaurant built around live-fire cooking, the ingredients of California, a thoughtful beverage program, and warm hospitality.

Our goal is to create food that feels thoughtful but never overly composed. The kind of cooking where exceptional ingredients, great technique, and restraint do most of the work.

We want the bread and pastry program to follow that same philosophy.

This is an opportunity for the right chef to have real creative ownership, build a team, develop Scout’s bread, pastry, and dessert programs, and create things that become part of the identity of the restaurant.

Compensation: Competitive salary based on experience
Position: Full-time Pastry Chef
Location: Marina District, San Francisco

To apply, please send your resume along with a short introduction telling us about yourself, the kitchens or bakeries that have shaped you, and the kind of bread and pastry program you’d be excited to build.