Each quarter culinary students rotate through a set of stations around the kitchen. In a ten week quarter we spend one week each washing dishes, preparing the entrée, preparing student lunch, creating salads, then soups, then starch and veg, a week in the dining room, and finally the very scary baking rotation. It is a perfect cycle. You pay $1,100.00 to prep your lunch, cook your lunch, then wash your dishes.
Bakery vs. Culinary is a very real rivalry. Only a few cross over into each other’s “dark side.” From culinary, it is the boys. Like roosters in a freekin hen house. From Bakery, it is the girls who bring the culinary boys treats. You are beginning to get the picture, no?
Personally, I blame it on our respective chefs. Their sigh when the other is mentioned doesn’t go unnoticed.
Last week I spend 12 hours in the bakery, and am beginning to think my desire to enroll in the program after completing culinary. In trying to explain it to Kevin I said that the bakery is a bit like a men’s tennis final. Everyone works individually, focused, on a particular project. Students break off individually to research, plan, prep or execute the most complicated of pastries. While my kitchen is a bit like the US Women’s World Cup soccer team of 1999- sans taking off ones shirt and running around the kitchen.
My partner J and I (I’ve told you that we are partnered up for the whole quarter right?) Spent our week baking cookies and bunt cakes. Me, getting yelled at for using a bain marie on the stove to create a double boiler to melt my chocolate (FYI. In the bakery a bain marie simply means a double boiler. Like a pot, filled part way with water and a bowl set on top. In the kitchen a bain marie is a bit like a soup insert. A tall cylinder used to hold sauces. So if you find yourself in a bakeshop and are told to grab a bain marie, grab a pot. Not an actual bain marie.)
Daily we work together to produce student lunch and a public buffet, sharing ingredients, working space, styling ideas and flavoring suggestions. This comradery is inspiring, however I am guessing that will all change next quarter when we step put to the line, literally. Next quarter we prepare all the meals, from scratch (currently the first quarter students take care of most of the prep for student lunch and we put it all together and cook it), for our Square One restaurant. I can’t wait. As for the pastry program, those jets have cooled.
