Greetings and well met!
I am a culinary arts instructional tech at a community college in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After a year of helping teach hot-food classes, I've been assigned to work the intro, intermediate and advanced baking classes. I'm more of a hot-food cook, but love baking. I'm trying to increase my knowledge and effectiveness in teaching baking.
My request is to folks who have taken structured baking classes. What did your classes lack? Is there something you really wanted to do that was not part ot the class? What do you feel is the most important thing you learned? What is your "dream syllabus" for a baking class, whether it's beginning, intermediate or advanced?
I would love to hear from anyone who has something to share.
For those bakers who have never taken a formal class: What element of baking do you think would be the most valuable for you to learn and practice?
Thanks in advance to anyone wishing to contribute.
Chef Steve "Mo" Fye
I would have to say practice gluten development and then practice some more! shaping is super important, and production management in more advanced classes. Science of how it all works is important also, but you wont be able to force feed that into a student(at least not me :) , sneak it in!). So make your classes hands on learning, before the wonderful world of the internet the only way you learned baking or many things for that matter was thru apprenticeships and although theory has it's place, practice makes perfect(most of the time).
good luck and happy teaching!
Angelo
Gluten is one of the key subjects in the intro and intermediate class. Another crucial item is altitude adjustment (we're at ~5k feet elevation, so we have to reduce leavening and adjust temperatures for sugars.
About 75% of the class is hands-on practical competencies. (six hours a day, four days a week)
We will do several methods of yeast and leavening. Breads, pies, quickbreads, cakes and decorating, etc.
I appreciate the feedback. I'll try to post some pics of what my students are making.
Mo
Hi Steve
I've been teaching breadmaking for over 20 years, now, and I absolutely love it.
The first thing I would say is you need to make the classes fun - and stress the ease and pleasure of making your own bread. Unfortunately, breadmaking is seen as a difficult subject - even some chefs are wary of using yeast. I went through a (very short) period of calling my course "The Complete Breadmaker", and no-one came! After that I tried to include the words 'Easy', or, 'Simple', in the course title, to allay the fears of the timid.
The content of the course will depend on your brief of course - I run community classes, Family Learning, classes for school children, etc, and those students just want to know how to make bread. So we cover soda bread, fancy dinner rolls, loaves, etc. But I don't have to follow a set curriculum - I ask the students what they'd like to make in the next session, and that's what we'll make. Each week we make 2 varieties of bread, one sweet, one savoury. Last night the students made Chelsea buns, focaccia, and they also made a high hydration dough which they took away with them to bake at home. All this in two hours.
I try and simplify everything - so we use cup measurements (the recipes that come with the course have both cup and metric measurements). I aim to remove all the mystery and mystique from breadmaking - I stress that it is an easy, everyday craft. I've been inspired by Vygotsky's zone of proximal development
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development
To put it another way, I want to bring breadmaking into my students' comfort zone.
Why don't you tell us about your prospective students and their likely needs?
This class is specifically for students pursuing a career in the restaurant industry, as well as commercial culinary and baking professions. We are ACF certified, so there is a list of competencies and outcomes each student must complete.
We use formula-based baking, so everything is measured by weight. The class is fairly math-heavy. Culinary degree students are required to take the intro/intermediate classes, and there's an additional advanced pastry and confection class for the baking degree. I earned both baking and culinary degrees a few years back.
I'll post a list of the requirements later. It's my Friday, so I'm going to have a well-earned beer! (liquid bread, no?)
Mo
would say something more like, "It's Friday, gotta build my starter first and then go for the liquid bread."
I tota agree!
LOL!
Mo, I've never been in a baking class. But if I were, I would actually love to learn a lot about the science. I'm one of those people who likes to know why things work. But I think you could do that as after class or before class reading, so you can maximise on hands on stuff during the class.
Good luck!
Very accurate. We have a gang of different starters all around the labs.
I've never had classes also. Learned the little I know through the internet, here most :)
Two things that came to my mind are
Shaping - because I'm can't say how bad or good my shaping is...
and
The right time to go to the oven. I also never sure about proofing time.
:)