In Pursuit of Pastry

Learning the pastry arts is not a piece of cake (no pun intended).  Our second week of school is getting a little more intense as we begin a journey in pursuit of pastry.  This week’s class continues to emphasize sanitation and safe practices in the kitchen.  As well it should!  Food preparation establishments have to be impeccably clean, as do the bakers and cooks.  I envision bakeries and restaurants employing a “professional itch scratcher” so that the chefs don’t have to touch their bodies and risk contamination. It’s not all sanitation and cleanliness though.  We also learned about the various equipment that can be found in the professional bakery kitchen as well as the myriad of ingredients common to the profession.  The study of flour was actually quite interesting!  So many different kinds, each with its own properties that determine how and when it’s used.  And by different kinds, I don’t simply mean white, whole wheat, rye, cor...

The pursuit of pastry starts with the basics.   As any accomplished musician, athlete, scientist, or chef will tell you, in order to reach their level of greatness, you must start with the basics.   You can’t make a fruit salad if you don’t know how to safely use a knife. And so it is with culinary school.   We start with the basics.   In this case, it was knife skills.   In the pastry arts program, we simply had to supreme an orange to demonstrate that we knew how to use a knife properly.   In a culinary course I once took we had to cut up carrots to show various size cuts, from cubes to brunoise.   I must’ve gone through two dozen carrots!   I assumed that this project would be simple and straight forward, and it of course was.   Even so, the cuts and slices must be perfect and the damn oranges didn’t want to co-operate.   The old saying, “good enough for government work” doesn’t apply here.   Peeling the orange was simpl...

Entering culinary school with a desire to begin a new career as a young pastry chef is both exciting and daunting.   Entering culinary school with a desire to start a second career as a middle-aged pastry chef is even more so!   But for me, the emphasis is on exciting.   When I realized that I am just a handful of years away from being eligible to retire from my job with the State of New Jersey, I decided that I should have something “in my pocket” in case I decide to take advantage of that eligibility.   I thought that it was time to take my passion for baking and pastries and make it work for me.   After searching the internet for classes to take, I found the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts .   I was surprised to learn that they offered an accredited online Professional Diploma in Pastry Arts program.   Realizing that this is the “real deal” it didn’t take me long to decide that this was something I needed to do. Pastry and b...