Going to Culinary School.....

When I left off before I had chosen to switch career paths after 20 years. I entered Culinary School to get a degree in Baking in Pastry Arts. I had taken a 13 week Saturday Class at the Culinary Academy of Long Island. It was a lot of fun. We made cookies, cakes, and assorted pastries. I loved it and realized I needed more training if I was going to take up a career in Pastry.
I visited the French Culinary Institute (FCI) and the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) both in Manhattan. Both schools seemed of great interest to me. The deciding factors were (1) ICE had only a few months wait to get in and FCI was over 6 months wait (2) ICE provided an Externship as part of their program where as FCI did not and finally (3) the commute was much easier to ICE. I know FCI has a better reputation but ICE has steadily been increasing its reputation.
In visiting the schools, I found the atmosphere to be a little more comfortable. An interesting tidbit, over 75% of the Pastry and Baking students were career changers. Of those, 80% of them came from Financial jobs (mostly Accounting). I think that basically Baking and Finance are similar in that they both deal with math and measurements. It isn't that people mistakenly thought they were registering for Banking and left out the N!
The program consisted of 5 days a week 4 hours a day for 5 months. School wasn't always easy. We were in a class of 12 students. We shared everything. Most of the mixing and baking was done as teams, and the finishing and decorating was done individually.
I had a really good class. Most of the people were in fact, career changers. There was one older woman who was taking it as a hobby. A pretty expensive hobby at that. She probably needed to be in more of a simple class. ICE does offer recreational courses that probably suited her better.
We also had a number of foreign students. They were from China, Korea, Brazil, Hong Kong, Bulgaria and New Jersey!
Our chef instructors were fantastic. We had four different instructors. Each had their own specialty. We did breads and doughs, chocolate, various pastries, cakes (including our own Wedding cake).
It wasn't always easy. Of course when dealing with 12 different personalities, there will be some conflicts. Some people aren't as willing to clean up after themselves, some are always looking to leave as early as possible, and some just don't know how to act in groups, especially when dealing with hot ovens and sharp utensils.
There was one incident where the older woman who was doing this as a hobby got severely burned when she poured boiling sugar into a plastic container and then tried to pick it up to throw it in the sink. We were all telling her not to do it, and she did anyhow. It healed ok, but she was in so much pain.
Part of the program was to get an externship at a Bakery, restaurant, or hotel. The school gives you leads and contacts and you are supposed to trail (work with a chef for a shift) to determine if you want to do an externship there. It is a great experience. After trailing at a few places, I chose to do my externship at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill.
I will talk more about that in my next post.
Have a great day!