When former Sault resident Stephanie Tucci - a professionally trained pastry chef - received an online invitation from The Food Network to audition for its Summer Baking Championship TV series, she thought the message was spam.
“A week went by and they sent me another message saying this isn’t spam. I asked them to call me and we had a really good conversation about what I do in the industry and they felt I was a good fit for the show,” Tucci said in a phone interview with SooToday.
She started a long audition process in September and was informed she had made it onto the show in January.
The Summer Baking Championship episodes can be viewed Mondays at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on Food Network Canada. Episode 5 will be aired soon. The Summer Baking Championship will wrap up before July 4.
“We taped the shows in Los Angeles in February but I just can’t say what happened. I’m under an iron clad non-disclosure agreement,” Tucci said with a laugh.
“All of the desserts in the championship revolve around summertime, summer memories, summer travel, summer colours. We’ve done faux ice cream bars, an underwater cheesecake that has to have a see-through underwater feature, we’ve had to make Mile High Pies. It was a lot of fun. Baking in a competition is quite challenging but I was looking for feedback from judges who I admire and I was willing to take the highs, the lows, the rollercoaster of the experience.”
Though it was quite a ride, Tucci said she enjoyed the Summer Baking Championship.
“I had so much fun with it. This was not a show where the contestants were trying to sabotage each other. The people I competed against were very high level chefs but they were also wonderful. These are people I’ll be friends with for life. We had so much fun together.”
Tucci is impeccably qualified to appear and compete on The Food Network.
Born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area, she studied at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City and worked in the savoury food world for 10 years before making the transition to pastry chef beginning in 2019.
She returned to school, studying at The Italian Culinary Institute in northern Italy’s Piemonte Region.
“That’s where I made the switch to the pastry side. It was like a light bulb went on for me. I felt like that’s what I should have been doing the whole time. When I was in Italy I just knew it. I was learning and working in an incredible restaurant for a pastry chef there and I never looked back. I’ve stayed in the pastry realm since 2019,” Tucci said.
“I grew up in a very food-centric Italian family where food brought people together,” Tucci said, reflecting on her journey so far.
“I recognized at an early age that food had the ability to bring people together. To this day at our family dinners and parties people put their phones down and gather around the table and enjoy the food and conversation. Food becomes very celebratory.”
“Even if you’re not a dessert person, when people are gathered around dessert it has the ability to literally make someone’s day. A single cookie can put a smile on someone’s face. It can cheer up a small child. There is a sense of happiness that comes when people are eating dessert and that’s something that I want to give people on a regular basis,” Tucci said.
Currently living in Barrie, Tucci owns and operates her own home-based bakery named By Chefanie, specializing in uniquely flavoured cakes and desserts.
After a period of living in the Sault, Tucci said she desires to return and to live and work in this community.
“My fiance had a work opportunity in Sault Ste. Marie. It was right after the pandemic and we were kind of tired with the GTA. We needed to press pause and I said let’s go. We came and it was the absolute best. It was great. The Sault was a great adventure for my fiance and I. It was really the best experience.”
Tucci returned to southern Ontario for family reasons and to prepare for her wedding but reiterated her wish to come back to the Sault.
"We were there for a year. I really enjoyed the community aspect. That’s what I miss the most. I feel like I was able to create a community around my dessert business but it was also the people in my east end neighbourhood. I’ve never experienced living in a neighbourhood like that, where neighbours looked out for each other and cared about each other. It was such an eye opening experience to the goodness of people.”
