66 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {food coloring} Everything about Sam Ceccotti’s culinary career has been about family. From the big Sunday dinners at her maternal grandparents’ house just outside of Philadelphia to the summers she spent as a kid with her pastry chef paternal grandmother in Florida, food was her connection to the people she loved. “My grandpa was always a good cook. He was self-taught and he always put love into everything. He sparked my love for the kitchen,” Sam recalls. “And my dad’s mother taught me everything in the Wilton cookbook, like how to make sugar flowers and cake decorations. It was all so beautiful and so creative. It was then I decided I wanted to become a pastry chef.” After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in New York, Sam landed the plum role of executive pastry chef at the Plumed Horse in Saratoga. But it was just a stepping stone to where she was truly meant to be. “When I first moved here in 2013, my first friend in the Bay Area took me on a tour of San Francisco. Craftsman and Wolves was actually the first place he took me to,” she remembers. That visit to the famous modern patisserie left an indelible impression on the young baker. “I remember walking into Craftsman and Wolves and noticing the smell, the aesthetic, the atmosphere. It was just so cool.” In 2021, after going through lockdown and giving birth to her son, Sam was itching to get back into the kitchen. “One day, BAKERY oven craft words by ELAINE WU • photography by PAULETTE PHLIPOT
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