Levity and Leavening

This week saw our class advance from the Hot Kitchen to the Bake Shop...a move of around 20 feet in distance and a thousand miles in kitchen personality.  We are now under the tutelage of Chef Chad, a Master Baker who originally trained at the prestigious C.I.A. (Culinary Institute of America) in New York and has worked and studied with some of the great patisserie chefs of Germany, Italy, and Vienna.  An artist as well as a baker, we've seen many photos of his ice sculpture, intricate wedding cakes, and ridiculously detailed pastries, some of which I will try to post next week.  Chef Chad has a fast wit, ready laugh, and seems to be genuinely good-natured.  He has a mind that grasps measures, ratios, and numbers, making him the ideal man to practice the precision required in properly done baking formulas (don't call them recipes).  He jokes around a lot before and between work, but while we are busy at the task he's all business. 

Our first couple days in the Bake Shop were centered around measuring and scaling ingredients, being introduced to unfamiliar equipment (and RE-introduced to already familiar equipment), cleanliness, and learning our responsibilities as regards cleanup.  Class leadership has come into play for the first time, as each of us will serve as Class Leader on a rotating basis.  My day in the leadership saddle came on Thursday, and I will say that I think I did a pretty decent job turning on the oven, keeping an eye on the baking items, releasing the class for mid-day break, and verbally recapping our days activities including the formulas, procedures, and methods used to produce some pretty respectable blueberry, corn, and bran muffins as well as tasty banana and carrot breads.  Almost everyone got 100% on the weekly quiz, so I will take credit for being the leader during that success.  Hail to the Chief.

We have a new temporary student, Ashley, who will be going into the Advanced Patisserie course in 9 weeks, but has to complete the entire beginning course with Chef Chad in that time.  She seems nice and I hope she does well in that very challenging course.  Her graduation is scheduled to coincide with ours in December.

Muffins, scones, biscuits, and quick breads were a good and varied start to our baking adventure.  The first week went by quickly, even though we've been staying in class longer than in the other phases because it's a more time-consuming form of cooking and frankly the cleanup is extensive (flour can get everywhere).  Chef Chad is just a little bit obsessive about being clean and orderly, to the point of assigning specific clipboards to the students and doing spoon and fork inventory at the end of the day.  I have no problem with this, as his kitchen is BY FAR the cleanest and best-supplied that we've seen thus far. 

I feel as though I haven't griped about anything for a while, so I'll mention here the weekly bake sale held on Friday mornings in the main school building.  While Chef Chad is kind enough to allow us to take samples of our baked goods home with us, there are always a dozen or so items that are packaged and set aside for Friday morning where they are sold at a bake sale.  I don't know where the proceeds from this sale go, probably into the same anonymous pocket that the Grande Buffet money went, but I can't say that I disapprove of at least getting the items out to people that will keep it from going to waste so for the time being I'll withhold judgement and maybe check it out on a Friday morning if we make something that I think is particularly good.  The students have the opportunity to come in and work at the bake sale for internship credit and I'll likely be doing that a few times in the next ten months. 

Classmate of the week is Chauntel.  Chauntel is a Personal Chef by trade and I'm told by another student that she is a very talented karaoke singer as well.  She is very comfortable in the kitchen and a good source of information if the chef isn't readily available.  Her business, DeuceFuzion is a successful personal chef and small-scale catering operation that she hopes to expand and bolster with the knowledge and skills she is honing in our course.  Those readers that are here on Oahu should check out:   http://www.deucefuzion.com/

Things we do or don't have:

We DO have a mid-day lunch break, which is a big change from our previous classes where we worked through to produce the dishes and then took the time to eat them.  As Chef Chad noted, even really good rolls and biscuits don't make a balanced meal.

We DO NOT have the relaxed morning arrival that we are accustomed to.  We sit and work begins promptly at 0900. 

We DO share our facility with the Hot Kitchen class ahead of us.  So we get to hear a little Chef Klaus throughout the day whether we want to or not.

We DO NOT have to decide who does what - Chef Chad assigns everything from where we sit to what we do for cleanup.  He's a very in-control guy.

We DO have two weeks remaining in this bake shop session to gain an understanding of the math for the baking formulas...

Which we DO NOT get as yet. 

"Eat one of these biscuits, boy.  I make damn fine biscuits"  - Robert Redford as Jeremiah Johnson