Aiken chef on Food Network’s ‘Spring Bakery Championship’

What began as a random call from a showrunner has turned Aiken Pastry Chef Dustin Charbonneau into one of the featured chefs in the Food Network’s “Spring Bakery Championship, Season 2.”

The first show airs tonight at 9 p.m. and the series runs through May on Food Network (TWC Channel 40). The show tests the limits of eight bakers in a series of competitions, the winner gets $50,000.

“Yeah, we were doing a shoot for Chef’s Roll (an industry magazine) and the photographer took a shot of me in front of the liquid nitrogen tank. Someone from the show saw the photo and called me,” says Charbonneau. “It was a ‘being in the right place at the right time’ kind of thing.”

At the time of filming, Charbonneau was working as the Executive Pastry Chef at moto in Chicago. When that restaurant closed in February, Charbonneau says he was ready to take a break from fine dining. That’s when Chef Kirstie Wohlseil, a good friend of his, asked him to join her and that’s how Charbonneau ended up at Aiken’s La Dolce Bakery.Cafe.Tea Room.

“I started out baking cookies in my grandma’s kitchen,” he says, “and worked my way up.”

Charbonneau’s specialty is laminate doughs — layered dough products such as croissants and puff pastry — that are some of the more labor intensive items to create.

About his experience, Charbonneau says “it was overwhelming. What they asked for... we were on the set at 6 a.m. until 8 or 9 at night.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 3:20 PM with the headline "Aiken chef on Food Network’s ‘Spring Bakery Championship’."