You have probably noticed that I’m going out of order on my culinary school blog posts. Can it be? Is it already day 8 of the second semester to the career of my dreams and the passion of my life? Well yes, yes it is. I’ve been that busy with school and work (not to mention the new house!) I’ve had no time to update the dear blog with all the wonderful things I’m doing in class. Don’t fret, the details are coming but class this Friday was just so incredibly mind blowing I just had to share it ASAP.

Meat Analysis is on Fridays 7am-9am with Chef Ogden. This week’s lecture: a 180 lb right front quarter of Harris ranch Choice beef. Chef spoke about the numerous muscles, bones, cuts, and areas of the animal while breaking each part down with ease and excitement that was downright awesome. The amount of information we must learn is a bit daunting but nothing that a little (okay, a lot of) studying won’t help with.

Here are some candid photos of the scene. Pretty amazing.

When you launch on a new journey in life, whether it be traveling to a new country, going back to school, or moving in with a significant other, you never really know what to expect. Sure, you have ideas and hopes of the future but all you can be sure of is the effort and attitude you exert in everything you do. Things happen around you, people change, but what can always stay the same is the love you carry for the things you are passionate for. I love eating food, I love cooking food, I love growing food, I love talking about food, and most of all, I absolutely love being around people who love food as much as I do.

As I first entered culinary school, I honestly thought it was a bit easier than expected. Borderline remedial, I must admit. Then, as the semester progressed, it became tougher with the accumulation of knowledge that one is expected to remember at any given moment, the early 5am wake up calls 5 days a week, and the ever increasing amount of burns located in the forearm area. I began to realize that what I knew about food in the beginning, whether from books, recipes, or (gasp) the food network, was a fraction of what I was learning in school and what would be expected to know out in the real world. Not only have I built on my culinary foundation to where I can now cook better, faster, and smarter, I now understand the reason why things are done they way they are. Call it science, call it general food know-how, call it anything that you wish but never call it unimportant.

What culinary school provided me during the first 79 days has been a revolutionary educational experience that will stay with me forever. As I embark on my second semester of school in two weeks, I revisit some of the core concepts learned during the first. I cannot wait to see what will come next!

1. Patience with People- learning how to bite your tongue and maneuver around those that do not take the program as seriously as you do. I have mentioned it in previous posts throughout the semester but working with certain people is hard. Some don’t want to show up on time so you have to do the bulk of work at your station, some don’t want to help out the team and only work on their one item in the four hour time span (frustrating!), some don’t want to collaborate on dishes and only want to do their ideas, and some just don’t want to put in the effort to do quality work (like they have no problem with having something look like sh*t because hey, we’re serving a cafeteria). The younger me would have made smart ass comments or gotten so mad it would have affected my sanity, but the older more mature Ashley rolls her eyes and keeps on truckin’. I realized a long time ago that there will always be people with poor work ethics and hard heads in the world, no matter what field of work you are in. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! The one thing I can do is show strength and serenity and never let them affect too much. Hey, you don’t want to show up so we have only 3 people at our station and we need to make 80 sandwiches, we can do it because I know time management and the need to get work done no matter what. Hey, you don’t want to listen to my idea and only want to do yours, fine. I will help out where I can but tomorrow we will make my dish because this is a learning fair environment, not a ‘I do what I want’ one. Needless to say, breathing and keeping calm was part of my mise en place daily and I will only get better at it over time.

2. Lamination- learning how to put a lot of butter layers in dough. I must admit, I never had the urge to make croissants or danishes (ever) but now that I have learned how it is done, I kinda like it. Perhaps my lack of desire to create these products stemmed from my overall intimidation of the entire process of creating those buttery layers. I mean, who has time to sit with a rolling pin and fold butter into a dough multiple times, all the while doing it properly (which means even distribution of the right temperature butter) so you get a good product? Not me! Then I learned what a ‘sheeter’ is. A wonderful piece of machine that rolls out your dough to a specific width in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it by hand. Ah, the glory of technology (I ask you, isn’t it a wonder how those 19th century bakers did everything without this stuff? I can’t even imagine!). I truly enjoyed being on breakfast station purely for this reason. Here’s how it’s done: make the dough (which includes yeast so you are getting double leavination action: one from yeast, one from butter), pound out the butter into a flat sheet between parchment paper, roll out the dough in the sheeter to twice the length as it is wide, put the butter sheet on one side and fold over the other half of the dough, roll out the dough to four times the length as it is wide, fold over one edge of the dough to the middle then the other edge to meet it at the middle then fold the dough from one side to the other to form one big mass (you have now completed a 4-fold), let dough rest for 45 minutes, roll out the dough to three times its length as it is wide to prepare a 3-fold, fold one end to the 2/3 length mark then the other end over that (so it is 1/3 the length over) then fold over the thickest side over the thinnest so you have (again) one mass, let dough rest 30 minutes, repeat 3-fold process one more time, finally roll out the dough to the desired thickness and shape. Breath. Yes, it’s a labor/time intensive process (and this is really half of the complete method) but it is really fun when you get into it and there is definitely a sense of pride one feels knowing you made something as delicious as a croissant.

3. Food Safety Temperatures- learning and then memorizing the important temperatures and holding practices of food so you don’t make people sick. If I had a quarter for every time my Microbiology professor said ‘poop’, I would be rich. Seriously, he told us some disgusting stories as if he had to scare everyone into doing things safely so as not to make people sick. On the positive note, I now know all handling temperatures (cooked foods need to be held at 135 F or above and cold foods 41 F or below), all ‘safe’ temperatures for meat cooking (145 F for fish and pork, 155 F for all ground meats, 165 F for all poultry and stuffed meats – note: some of these temps overcook the meat but that’s why I put quotes around the word safe ), how to calibrate and properly use a thermometer, the minimum distance shelving has to be from the floor (6″ so rodents and pests can’t hide below), the temperatures of a 3 compartment dishwasher and a high temperature dishwasher, and the maximum amount of time one can reheat or cool down a food so it is not in the TDZ (temperature danger zone) for over 4 hours. I know, this is definitely not the most glamorous side of the kitchen but nonetheless extremely important to know and follow.

4. Recipe Memorization. Pastry cream, creme anglaise, pate choux, pie dough, rich short dough, meringue, and buttercream. Honestly, if I were to write out all of these recipes I would bore you and reach my maximum word count for this posT. Let’s just say that if you have all the ingredients needed and a scale to weigh them out (because now I weigh out every dry ingredient by ounces – another concept I learned from school that is #9 on the list), I can make the above items no problem. This has proved quite a skill when needing something quick for a dinner party.

5. Kitchen Lingo- saying ‘behind you’ or ‘HOT’ when walking through the kitchen. Letting people know where you are and what you are carrying is essential to kitchen safety. Burns are prevalent, cuts are going to happen, and things fall on the ground often making the floor a hazard itself. The most important thing that you can do to be a productive member of the kitchen team is to warn folks if you are coming up behind them (so they don’t make any sudden moves or can move to side to get you of your way), if you have something hot (so they don’t bump into you and get burned or worse yet, leave you standing there with something burning your own hand), or if you are coming around the corner with a knife or something hot (for this you yell ‘Corner! Hot!’ or ‘Knife!’).

6. Bread Making- Types of flour, stages of gluten development, and how to shape and bake the bread . Oh man, where do I start? This was an intense station that will stay with me for life. To make a great bread you have to understand yeast and what it needs to grow: temperature, food, and water. You have to understand each stage of gluten development (mixing period, preliminary gluten development period, intermediate development period, and the pickup period) and see the difference in each. You have to understand bulk fermentation, ‘turning of the dough’ (basically redistributing the food and equalizing the temperature), scoring, steaming, and baking of the dough and why you do each step. You have to know different types of bread and what types of yeast (or starter) they require. There is lean dough and enriched dough too, both requiring different yeast, ingredients, fermentation and baking periods, and both yielding completely different breads. A good bread is probably the most cared for thing in the world (okay, besides a baby) because it needs your attention, patience, and understanding to do successfully. I love making bread.

7. Egg Chemistry- the yolk, chalaze, thick white/albumen, thin white, and shell. Those commercials in the late 90′s weren’t kidding when they sang ‘the incredible edible egg’. It truly is mother nature’s finest gift and chef’s best friend as it can create an abundance in the kitchen. Use the yolk to emulsify a dressing (i.e. mayonnaise), use the white to create air in a cake or a frosting, or use the entire egg to add richness and nutrition to a dish. To witness a gloppy, clear mucus turn into a foamy, white, and fluffy structure is magic. To taste the decadence in a homemade mayonnaise is ecstasy. To understand how the egg parts cook (at 149 F it will produce the most delicious custardy egg, at 160 F a tender more set egg, and at 185 a completely hard boiled egg) is power. I will never go without eggs in my kitchen again. You simply cannot call yourself a chef if you do not agree.

8. The Conversion Factor- How to decrease or increase the amount yielded in a recipe. In the real world, a 6 person recipe will not suffice a dinner service feeding 100 people and will need to be altered. It’s actually quite an easy equation and only requires knowledge of ounces (see #9 below) and basic math. Here it is: New yield/Old yield= Conversion Factor. Let’s say you have a recipe that feeds 4 and you have 20 people coming over. That would make your CF 5. Now, list out all your ingredients, convert them to total ounces, then multiple each of them by 5. You now have your new ingredient measurements to make the dish a success. Go figure, all this time I thought you simply multiple or divide a recipe by the number of people to increase or decrease the yield to the correct amount.

9. Ounces- liquid and dry measurement chart memorization. 128 oz= 1 gallon= 4 quarts= 8 pints= 16 cups; 1 cup= 16 tb; 3 tsp= 1 tb. Rule is to never use cups for dry measurements ever as that is strictly or liquid ingredients. Think of a substance like flour which has the ability to be packed in tight in a cup or loosely depending on how one shovels it in the measuring device: one might weigh 8 ounces and the next might weigh 4. This is a HUGE difference in the baking process and can completely ruin the structure of whatever good you are making. Although I have improved as a baker ten-fold and become more confident in my baking skills knowing that mathematics and chemistry are on my side, I kinda feel like this has ruined some recipes for me now: I simply cannot use a household recipe that uses cups for its dry ingredients anymore. I feel so handicapped!

10. Salad Classification & Composition- appetizer, entree, side, dessert, and entremet. I have always made salads, but I never thought about the actual thought process involved in creating a successful salad for a customer. You have to think about the type of green you use if you are creating a bulk salad for a big party or buffet (cause you don’t want a wimpy one that will wilt or get soggy), you have to think about the purpose of the salad and ensure it is the right size and has the right nutritional balance (would you serve a chef salad for a appetizer or an orange and beet salad for an entree?), you have to think about the flavor profile of the produce being used and the dressing it will be served with (a nice mix of baby greens would do great with a light vinaigrette but a hunk of romaine would not), and you most definitely have to think about the appearance and presentation of the salad (are you just going to make a mound of everything or do you want to fan some items out or possibly use an edible vessel to carry it?). I think salads are an under appreciated and misunderstood creation of the kitchen for all of these reasons: there is a lot to think about to get it right and I most certainly will never take it for granted again!

I have officially ended my first semester at City College of San Francisco’s culinary program and I couldn’t be more proud, not to mention excited to see what next semester will bring. It was hard work to get up everyday at 5am and be at school until 2pm, but every second was worth it. I have learned so much in the 79 days that I have been in the kitchen it is hard to imagine how I survived without this knowledge in all my years! It’s not like I didn’t make good food before my stint in cooking school, but now I know the reasons why things taste good and what happens during the cooking process. I think that is my second favorite thing about becoming a chef (second to making bellies happy from eating yummy food): learning and understanding the chemistry behind food and food reactions. Very cool.

Since so many students are hard at work in the kitchen for the entire semester, it goes without saying that there is some major cleaning needed at the end of the year to make the space nice and neat again. Wow, this was hard work! Every table needed to be pulled away from the wall so the wall could be washed down, every piece of machinery needed to be scrubbed clean with a toothbrush, every oven needed to be cleaned inside and out,

every wood surface needed to be sanded down and covered with butcher paper and plastic wrap, and every bottle and container needed to be wiped down and/or put in another clean container. I can see why this was needed after you are covered in dust and grease: gross! Safe to say, no stone was left unturned and the kitchen is beautifully shiny again for next semester.

I shall certainly miss all the new friends I have made this year during summer break. Such great people who will one day be such great chefs!

What is the art of bread?  Is it creating the perfect crumb and crust and knowing the difference needed for each type of bread?  Is it understanding the process of fermentation and how much is required to create CO2 and flavor?  Is it using quality ingredients and correct ratios so you fruit a tasty bread?  Or, is it all about mixing the dough and handling it properly to coax maximum gluten development?  Well, it is all of these things and more.  Baking bread is a craft that, while many novices can tackle, takes years to truly understand and do right.  I mean, really right.  The difference between a good and bad bread, and the ability to understand the difference, is not something easily sighted.

I can only claim a total of 24 bread making hours and probably 4 bread studying hours and I have barely touched the tip of the dough-burg.  Yes, I know the stages of gluten development and fermentation, the protein ratios in different flours, as well as the different lean dough starter methods (all of which, by the way, is crucial to treating bread the right way), but I can’t just walk up to a dough in a mixing bowl and tell that it is too dry or too wet.  I can’t look at a ciabatta or baguette bulk fermenting and tell you that it is ready to be shaped without looking at a (reputable) book’s time duration recommendation. These things can only be learned through years of work and experience with making breads. Your touch, sight, taste, and smell become keen to every stage and change of the dough that almost a sixth sense is developed and you just ‘know’ when something is right or wrong. I see this every day with my pastry Chef Professor and it is something to be admired, and most definitely earned. I should probably let on a secret that I am going to be making bread at least once a week during summer break so I don’t lose my bread making knowledge momentum and only add on to my bread time card .

Some of the items I made this week were sunflower seed rolls, baguette, challah, bagels, and thyme/lemon whole wheat sourdough. I also cut up a whole lot of bread!

I particularly liked making the challah bread. For one, it is a tasty bread to eat because of the enriched dough and use of eggs but secondly, it is really fun shaping the loaves and seeing it bake into a beautiful braid. The morning that I came in after making the dough the previous day and storing it in the fridge, the yeast made it rise so much the dough looked alive! You just know its going to be good when dough is that happy.

 

 

 

 

 

Once we rolled the dough out into twelve inch long strands, we began braiding them in 5 and 3 strand designs.

 

The 5 braid is super easy to do if you know the rotation. Just pull the 1st one over the 3rd strand, the 2nd over the 3rd, then the 5th over the 3rd and start over again. Each time you pull a strand over, they are renumbered 1-5 again so you never have to keep track of which number is which, merely count from left to right again.

Finish the braided dough with egg wash and whatever seed you wish on top.

Bake at 350 F until a nice brown is achieved on the crust and voila, you have challah!

We also made rolls out of the challah dough which were very tasty as well topped with fennel and poppy seed.

The one thing that I never made at the station, though, was foccacia. Oh, how I wish I was in a rotation where we were able to make foccacia. Since school is out in two days (not including finals week) and the kitchen shuts down today, we stopped making foccacia about two weeks ago. Sounds weird, but since this bread is so time consuming we make about 20 pounds of it (yes, twenty!) at a time and freeze it so that we can pull a sheet or two of it every day for 10 days. Chef knows we love it so much that during foccacia baking day he holds a sheet of it back and brings it in to class for everyone to eat. So good!

Ah, I am going to miss going in to the kitchen everyday. Maybe not the 5am wake up call but the atmosphere, the friends I have made, and certainly the products that we make. I have learned so much in my days here, I cannot wait to see what next semester has to offer!

The last week has been….non-demanding, to say the least. Student chef is analogous to being an errand runner, an assistant…basically somebody’s bitch. Sorry: I just had to say it!

No worries, though, this is what the beginning will be like out in the industry: you must pay your dues before growing into something bigger. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to, but many start from the bottom and work their way up with daily activities consisting of washing dishes, cleaning up mess, sweeping and mopping, filling up empty containers, peeling twenty pounds of carrots, and running errands for the kitchen. Not too bad if you stay positive but I am desperately happy to be done with this station and back on breads. Remember when I only had a total of two days on bread station in March right when the switch happened from savory to pastry? Well, I am glad to say that a full rotation has been made and I get to spend my last 4 days in the kitchen at this station. Yup, only 4 more cooking days left until a heavy duty clean-up session begins at school. All students are required to participate in a deep clean monster party for the last two days of school before letting out for summer break. We have actually been told to wear ‘clothes you don’t care about getting really dirty’ so this should be pretty (scary) intense.

On a positive, more scholarly note, I received a 47/50 on my piping practical. Very happy with the results…wasn’t perfect but practice makes better. Now on to my chocolate piping practical…it’s going to be much more difficult. Ugh.

Last Thursday marked my last day at plated desserts station. Wow, I learned so much in the 7 days there (and have slacked so much on my blogging responsibilities) that this post is going to be a long (and interesting) one. Sit tight, fasten your seat belts, and get ready to have some culinary knowledge thrown on you .

Like I stated before, we make 3 desserts daily for our sit down, more elegant portion of the cafeteria, ‘The Pierre Cost Room’. Chef requires us to make one of these such desserts into tarts but since I make tart dough frequently at home as well as rocked the cakes and tart station a couple weeks ago, I am going to glaze over that portion of school and move on to the more fun and less-seen-in-your-kitchen desserts I have created. These pictures should quench your tart thirst, though, and any questions you may have (as always, let me know if you want some recipes!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I always like to push myself at school and take any opportunity to work on items I would normally never take a (first) chance on at home. Why dirty up your own kitchen or spend your own money on ingredients for a recipe you don’t really know what should look like in the stages leading up to the final product? Not smart, I say, hence my justifications for the next couple of dishes.

The first item on the menu was a hazelnut eclair. Who doesn’t love a cream filled, airy, lightly chewy baked dough? No friends of mine, I say! Surprisingly, pate a choux is a pretty easy preparation and something that no one should be afraid to do in the comfort of their home. All is it is a mixture of eggs, flour, salt, butter, water, and milk made into a paste and then piped and baked at a high temperature for ultimate fluffiness and filled with some awesomeness. Yes, I am simplifying it to a great degree but get your ingredient measurements correct and follow the directions and it’s as easy as pie (really).

First, melt the butter with the salt, water, and milk.
When it is just at a simmer and you see bubbles on the side of the saucepan, dump the flour in all at once and stir into a paste.
Then, put the mixture into a kitchen aid and mix in the eggs two at a time until fully incorporated.
The goal here is to get the consistency right which means you may need more or less eggs depending on how the dough looks. A good way to judge this is lifting the paddle attachment out of the dough and seeing if the dough falls into a ‘V’ shape (shouldn’t be clumpy, shouldn’t be tough: it should be silky smooth and fall into the shape easily but not be so viscous it can’t hold the shape).
Next, pipe the dough into 4″ by 1/2″ long tubes and bake at a high temperature (400 degree Fahrenheit) until golden brown and puffy.
We actually put our first batch of pate a choux in a 350 degree oven and instead of it lifting up and becoming light and airy, it baked into a rock and stayed in it’s measly long shape. Gross.
Ah, the craziness of science: high temperature mixed with water creates steam and therefore air in your baked product. See the difference?
For the transformation into the final product, we piped a mixture of pastry cream and hazelnut caramel butter
(seriously the most tasty thing ever: toasted hazelnuts thrown into caramel, hardened, then pureed into a butter) into the tubes, then dipped them in a light caramel, and then sliced almonds.
Who ever knew you could make these look so elegant!
The flavor combinations for these are endless: strawberry creme and white chocolate, pistachio creme and chocolate, cinnamon creme and mexican chocolate, or even banana creme and coconut caramel. You can even make different shapes like rounds (also known as ‘creme puffs’), hearts, swans, or any other form that comes to your mind. So easy, so good!

The second item on my to-do list was marshmallow. Who makes their own marshmallow these days? I do! Again, surprisingly simple to make. Hmmmm…I am beginning to think that pastry chefs and bakers like to just say things are hard to do so they have the market and you are forced into buying their products .

First bloom some gelatin sheets, whip some egg whites in a kitchen aid until medium peaks form, and mix together sugar, water, cornstarch, vanilla bean, corn syrup, and salt in a saucepan. Then, take the sugar mixture and bring to 240 degrees, a little over the thread temperature for sugar cooking.
Once the temperature is reached, remove from the heat and pour the hot sugar mixture into the egg whites, and whisk on medium until a meringue consistency is reached. Once ready, add the gelatin sheets to the mixture and increase the speed to high and whip until light, fluffy, and shiny (a bit longer than what the picture displays below).
Next, pour the marshmallow out onto a lined, greased baking sheet and let cool until set.
Finally, cut into desired shapes and dust with powdered sugar and cornstarch or anything else you wish to add as flavor (cinnamon sugar or even cocoa powder would be nice).
I know its cliche, but I really wanted to plate the marshmallow as a deconstructed s’mores dish. Not the most revolutionary nor original but it tasted great and looked fantastic. The advanced pastry class had made graham crackers the day before so I used that as the base to the marshmallow ‘stick’, then scooped some chocolate ganache into a canel shape and added chocolate ribbons to the side of that to simulate the ‘fire’. I thought it was a pretty clever take on plating if I do say so myself.

In between creating these plates desserts above, the class worked on the yearly buffet hosted in The PCR. Let me tell you, there is so much work that goes into creating that much quantity of food that I will never ever again take for granted what I see at the beautiful Las Vegas hotel buffets. The entire class never stopped moving and I don’t think I have seen Chef that stressed and worked up ever. LOL. I kinda get the feeling that this is what it would be like working at one of these such hotels or even catering when no matter what you have to do, you have to get it done on time. That is your job, and there are no late deliveries accepted. Period.

We filled, topped, and glazed 150 tartlets…
We made, glazed, and cut two huge sheet trays of flourless chocolate cake into tiny rectangles…
And we plated as many as we could on so many granite plates and tiers that all of our counters were full of product.
The buffet turned out amazing. Each semester has a hand in making the event a success and I would say that our Chefs were very happy with what we did.

To conclude this epic post, I moved over to ‘student chef’ position last Friday and have thus completed a full rotation in the pastry kitchen. I basically do whatever Chef tells me to do so don’t expect any cool pictures or crazy creation stories. Should be pretty mellow until the next move back to bread station.

Next on the task list, though, is the piping practical of buttercream and chocolate. Oh man…talk about needing to practice and do my homework. Chef has made this portion of the class 5% of your total grade and piping perfectly is so hard! I have to pipe chocolate into 3 different elements: ‘Happy Birthday’, a decorative symbol, and a border…
I have to make a rose (yes a rose!) out of a buttercream…
And I have to pipe pearls, shells, and rosettes out of buttercream.
WISH ME LUCK!