Bakers at the Patisserie in Skaneateles love to bake. Each one of them is passionate about what do and they each have their own unique way of fitting into the fine-tuned machine known as the Patisserie.

Cariey Brown is a wife and mother and has the most experience of the staff, working at the Patisserie for over eight years. She opens the shop three days a week and begins her day before 5 a.m. She actually enjoys coming in early though because she gets about an hour of solitude and privacy, giving her busy day a rare moment of peace and quiet. Brown's specialty is pastries because that is the area of baking she enjoys the most. However, she still knows the inner workings of the shop as well as, and perhaps even better than the other bakers there.

Peter Lord has been working in the culinary arts for 35 years. He came to the Patisserie at the request of Michael Cheney, the bakery's manager and cake designer. Lord and Cheney worked together at Phoebe's, a restaurant in downtown Syracuse, for many years and both appreciated how well they worked together. When the opportunity for Cheney to manage the Patisserie presented itself, he left Phoebe's and brought Lord along with him because Cheney said its hard to find that type of relationship in the industry. Lord enjoys working over the dough and does it almost exclusively. The other bakers respect him and his territory on the preparation table.

Cheney provides comic relief and personality as he leisurely strolls into the bakery at 8 a.m., late by a baker's standards. As the only cake designer, Cheney has a separate role at the Patisserie. He only bakes, shapes, and decorates specialty custom cakes ranging from your traditional birthday cake and tiered wedding cakes, to football helmets and guitars. He laughs a lot and lives by the motto, "at the end of the day, it's just sugar."

Frank Van Volkinburg is the new guy, arriving at the Patisserie in June. He has not always been a baker, but he found his flare for baking about three years ago after quitting a factory job that didn't fulfill his personal sense of self. Van Volkinburg has been baking for the least amount of time but has more varied experience as he is the only one who has worked at a large scale commercial bakery. Van Volkinburg loads the ovens and has no arm hair to prove it. He bravely sticks his arms in the 400 degree ovens to tweak the position of the dough.

Each baker serves as a pivotal point in the operation of the Patisserie that the community has come to adore. They are all talented with varied personalities, but in the end they all mix and work well together because they're all about the dough.