Despite her youth, Lauren Petri, the pastry chef at The Hamilton, has managed to put a lot of mileage into her career. From a childhood in Annapolis to the culinary program at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C., to an internship in Switzerland, Petri now rules the sweet side of a prestigious kitchen in D.C.
As it turns out, family members also helped shape her baking passion, too. “My mom did a lot of baking with me,” she explained. “She was a homemaker, so while she was making dinner I’d hang around the kitchen and help her put together a salad or I’d measure out ingredients for cookies. I remember this one book we had was called, “The Alphabet Cookbook,” and it had pictures of tablespoon and cup measurements for each ingredient and every letter would be a different recipe. … I would pick out the recipe I wanted to make and my mom would walk me through each step and then let me work through it on my own.”
