The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

My High School Students baking

carltonb's picture
carltonb

My High School Students baking

First sours of the school year. Each student makes their own levain over the last 5 weeks.

We made a 40% and 70%

Also made sub buns as well

Carlton Brooks CCE, CEPC, ACE

Comments

Floydm's picture
Floydm

Wow, high school students?  That is pretty exciting.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Look like they must have a pretty good teacher!

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Your students are producing some very good work, Carlton.  The uniformity of the sub buns is particularly impressive.

If you find the time, would you be willing to share some more about the classes you teach?

Paul

carltonb's picture
carltonb

I have been teaching high school students in a culinary arts program for 33 years. I am a CEPC (Certified Executive Pastry Chef) and a CCE (Certified Culinary Educator) through the American Culinary Federation.

My specialty in the program is teaching the Baking and Pastry Arts component. Our program has over 200 high school age students, who meet with us for 2 1/2 hours a day  5 days per week. The program is a two year curriculum.  Many of our students go on to higher education. To aid in this we do an annual fundraiser "Mystery Chef Dinner" that generates over $40K each year that goes directly into the students scholarship fund which they can apply for.

We are also an approved ACFEF school, which means that the American Culinary Federation Educational Foundation has done a site visit and approved the curriculum, methods of instruction and facility to meet their standards.

In my program the students are with me all two years. The students in the culinary component rotate through the front of the house, as well as advanced and basic culinary principles.

Our building is over 60,000 sq f. We have a banquet facility that seats 400. We can on some weeks do over 3000 catered meals. From a chefs choice menu to something custom designed.

By doing these events we generate a lot of money. We use this money for bringing in a wide variety of food products. During our fish lecture each culinary students fillets and bones there own whole salmon, not like in the college schools where they may just see a demo.

We get lots of "toys" lent or donated to us through our purveyors. We have a woodstone pizza oven, many different types of cooking equipment that are just coming on the market. etc.

Many of our students are employed at some of the highest end restaurants in the area. The chefs in town know that we are teaching the basics and giving the students are well grounded education. And they want to work and learn. 3 James Beard winners, and three Iron chef winners in the area all employ our students.

You can view some of what we do on our web page at www.evitculinary.com or our facebook page at EVITCulinaryArts.

If you have any more questions please let me know.

Chef Carlton Brooks

pmccool's picture
pmccool

That's a very impressive program!  I appreciate your taking the time to tell us about it.

dab - methinks you and Carlton might have the keys to an Arizona TFL meetup.

Paul

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

My old food DC  is on Robson just South of Main in downtown Mesa.  I live about 15 minutes away from the  culinary school.  Nothing I would like better than to get to know Carlton and the rest of the folks there and possibly find out how I support their effort so teach youngsters the skills required to be a chef and a baker in a successful business.

This is so cool.  Can't wait tp see how this works out.  I really got into cooking seriously when we bought out a small French chef culinary supply business in Chicago - a very small business it was too but a huge inventory. .  The owner, who we kept on as our corporate chef to teach other chefs about our products and how to use them just happened to be the president of the French Chefs Society in Chicago.  Claude was a tremendous asset for our business and we grew it aggressively.   I put in a professional restaurant quality teaching kitchen at most of our  6 DC's so Claude could teach and help sell the products we inherited and promote his old business. Actually 5 DC's  because the one place we didn't do it was in Mesa AZ as the DC was an older one and we were going to replace it with a a new facility.

We  decided to sell the DC'e in AZ snd NM and we sold DOIU Southwrst in Mesa to the current owners who were past owners of Epicurean Food Service in Scottsdale and what is now DPI Northwest in Portland before we bought both of them out.  Their business in Mesa is called Epicurean Fine Foods and I am sure that Carlton knows them - or he will! soon enough.