Baking Boot Camp at the Culinary Institute of America

I'm sitting here in my hotel room, just before 7 in the morning, on the saturday after a week at the CIA - Culinary Institute of America - attending the Baking Boot Camp class. It's nippy out there, about 3 degrees celsius and I grabbed a cup of hot tea from the breakfast table downstairs and am sitting here munching on the chocolate chip and cinnamon scone we made in class last week.

The CIA at Hyde Park - a 1.5 hours drive from New York City, was founded in 1946 and is the premier culinary school in the United States - in fact, it's the only school in the US that is fully dedicated to the pursuit of culinary arts. There are two other campuses in the US, and the Hyde Park is the original one. I'd been looking forward to these two classes for months!

I'd signed up for two classes back to back - the Baking Boot Camp and the Cooking Boot Camp - both basic starter classes designed to provide both a culinary vacation in the fully immersed environment of a full fledged culinary school as well as go back to the basics of Baking and Cooking.

And I haven't baked in years and can count on one hand the number of times I've done a cookie or a brownie from a box in my decades on this earth!

Our class had thirteen students, consisting primarily of people who have been baking and cooking for many years at home, even including a couple of them who own a bakery and online cookie store back home. I guess I was the only true novice, but the Chef instructor - Chef Juergen Temme from Germany - made everything seem not toooo difficult to accomplish even though I felt I obviously lacked the flourish and ease that the other students seem to have. Though I still managed to churn out quite tasty products indeed!

For 4 days, I kneaded dough, used a mixer for the first time in my life, and made savoury biscuits, cookies, scones, pound cake, and braided bread dough to make a giant challah, shaped dough to make baguettes, and oh yes! pies! My team did an apple and chocolate cream pie. And we made our own lunch of pizzas on the last day.

The most interesting part for me apart from the actual class and lectures, was being amongst the students doing their associate (2 year) and bachelor (4 year) programs. A large proportion of them came fresh from High School with the requisite minimum 6 months of real experience in a kitchen (excluding fast food kitchens like Mcdonalds and Starbucks) for either cooking or baking, and some of them already have an initial (non culinary) bachelor's degree. The average age of the students is 23, and classes looked intense! I also saw the occasional student who looked more mature - in their 50s and beyond. Career changers, I imagine.

Basically, everything you eat  and that takes place at the CIA is made by and made to happen by the students - from the mass production kitchen (the cafeteria where we breakfasted and lunched everyday)  to the French and American restaurants Escoffier and American Bounty and the casual cafe Apple Pie Bakery. The service staff is made up of students too, obviously - even as you're studying to be a chef (Back of House), they want you to understand the Front of House, in particular if you plan to open a restaurant or head up a kitchen in the future.

Oh boy, I sure envied those students - rushing from class to class, 12-15 hour days hands on in the kitchens, being yelled at by their chefs. I'm not sure if I would ever go to full time culinary school since the original idea isn't to open a restaurant or be a purveyor of fine cakes online, but I suppose it was a combination of non stop learning in this beautiful, immersive environment, and the idea that you have your whole life ahead of you, that made me feel a bit wistful.

More deep dive details about the week to come!