This is the last in our series of educators featured in our Bake Twentyfive issue.

Mitch Stamm, who is widely known in the craft baking industry for his expertise in sweet and savory viennoiserie, as well as bread baking, sees several key trends developing in the marketplace.

“Increasingly sophisticated farming and a renewed appreciation for milling challenge the baker differently,” he says of one trend, which he calls getting more primitive. “Minimal intervention will continue to gain momentum. Bakers will continue to nurture and steward dough rather than intervene. They will humbly fade into the background to offer breads that celebrate the grain and the fermentative process.”

Stamm trained at The French Pastry School, San Francisco Baking Institute and L’école Lenotre in Plasir, France, and currently teaches at the International Baking & Pastry Institute at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of The Pastry Chef’s Apprentice. An active board member of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, Stamm demonstrates his technical skills in the classroom and at bakery events.

“We can teach so much more, especially leadership,” he says of education today. “Leadership in the kitchen, at home, and in the community. The lessons in the kitchen mirror the lessons in life. I love the fact that over four years, I get to witness the chrysalis mature into a responsible, ethical professional. And it happens every four years. It’s the fountain of youth.”