TAMPA, Fla. — Chef Rosana Rivera is stretching dough for a daily croissant order at Chef & the Baker.

“We bake about 10,000 pastries a week — all different,” she said.

When she’s not creating social media content or baking gluten-free snacks, Rivera is teaching people how to do these things in her cooking classes.

“The most important thing to learn how to cook is to love food. I would say if you like to eat, you know how to cook," she said.

Rivera said she focuses on one main skill for each class — Spectrum News was able to get a sneak peek at her bow tie pasta tutorial from basic pantry ingredients. Rivera said her focus is on technique.

“If you learn the foundation on how to do something, then you can make these dishes your own very easily,” she explained, beating eggs inside a well of flour.

Rivera also says that if you listen, you can learn the language of food. “Like this just told me, I was starting to work a little bit harder with dough," she said. "'OK, it’s time for the next step.’”

After the dough rises, Rivera flattens it with a pasta roller attachment on a mixer, but she says the appliance is not necessary — you can roll it out by hand.

“It’s just a little bit more time consuming,” she said. The same goes for Rivera’s measuring, cutting and crimping tools.

She said the idea is for people to work with things they may have at home.

Rivera says the biggest payoff for her is watching people settle into the kitchen and find joy in cooking.

“I love changing people’s perception from, ‘My gosh, I would never do that,' to 'I just made the cutest little bow tie,’” she said. Don’t stress she said, because they don’t have to be perfect. “That’s the beauty of handmade pasta,” Rivera said, smiling. “And they taste so good.”