Course: Pastry Arts: Exploring Ingredients and Techniques

Institution: San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI)

Instructor: Juliette Lelchuk

Location: South San Francisco/near the SFO airport

It was my lemon meringue pie entry in a baking contest when I was 13 that pretty much told me I was a baker. The night before my entry was due I stayed up all night making four pies from scratch – I had never made pie before but I was determined. There was also a time, in law school, when I baked something every day – desperate for a bit of the tangible in such an abstract world. I’ve dabbled in home baking for a good many years now. That’s why, with a little time on my hands, I jumped at the chance to take a professional baking course at the San Francisco Baking Institute. I decided to take the introductory five day pastry course: Pastry Arts: Exploring Ingredients and Techniques.

The course is 5 days and meets from 8am to 5pm each day. Pastries for breakfast and lunch are provided every day, and you get to take home massive amounts of baked goods every day. The morning starts with a lecture and the afternoons are spent in the lab – actually baking.

Day One: Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Raisin, Peanut Butter, Snickerdoodle, Ginger Molasses, Diamond Cookies and Coconut Macaroons

The first day was the longest lecture day and covered the pillars of baking. We spent a lot of time on the science of baking, covering things like stabilizers, emulsifiers, binding agents, gums, the sweetness scale, acidity, etc. Baking is basically a structure and once you know how to build, then you can go crazy – kind of like the relationship between structural engineering and architecture.

After lecture we went to the lab where I ended up at a table with a culinary student and a young woman who had never seen a mixer in her life. There was quite a range of skills and experience in the class. By the end of lab, the newbie was transferred to another table and it was just me and the culinary student pumping out cookies.

Day Two: Muffins, Cream Scones, Butter Scones, Streusel Topping, Coffeecake

The next day, a new student joined the class, rounding us out to 15. She asked another student in the class to summarize day one for her and got this response: “You didn’t miss much; I just learned that I’ve been whipping the shit out of everything.” It’s important in baking to take your time.

In lecture we covered more of the essential baking ingredients: eggs and fats, and the mixing techniques for Quick Breads. Then we arrived at Meringues. I’m convinced my lemon meringue pie entry failed to take the prize because my meringue shrunk. So you can imagine my delight upon learning how to keep a meringue from shrinking or weeping – it almost moved me to tears.

After another long lecture, we headed into the lab to bake. My table was joined by the woman who skipped day one. She had also arrived for day two 45 minutes late. We’ll call her Ms. Late. I quickly learned she was not as interested in learning as I was. With the recipes right in front of her, she kept asking me which ingredients to use and what to do. I sensed she was going to be trouble.

Day Three: Angel Food Cake, Pound Cake, Brownies, Rocher Meringue, Pâte à Choux, Chouquettes, Gougères
Day three we jumped into cakes. In lab, midway through our time, we were informed by our teacher that she was transferring another student to our table, to make us 4. The new member, let’s call her Mrs. X, asked to be moved from her table because she was not getting along with another man at her lab table. Within minutes of her moving to our table, I began to understand what may have been causing the trouble at Mrs. X’s original table.

I was folding flour into dough for a huge batch of brownies in a bowl by hand. As the lab is in a commercial bakery, everything we do is commercial-size. That means we often worked with 20 quart mixing bowls and very large quantities. Mrs. X saw me folding in the flour and told me that I had to be sure to scrape the sides. I nodded in assent and kept at my task. I do know how to scrape the side of a bowl. Apparently, she was unsure of my skills, so she proceeded to walk over and start scraping the bowl I was working in. As Mrs. X is a very large woman, her action physically moved me aside. I was pissed but I simply walked away and watched her basically fold the shit out of the brownies. After several minutes, she looked up and realized that the rest of the table was standing away from her and watching. She scurried over to me and said, “Oh it looks like I’ve made you mad.”

I said, “You have to admit, that was pretty off-putting.”

“Well,” she said in a huff and then went to turn away but not before she slipped on something on the floor and fell. The incident left a bad taste in my mouth.

Day Four: Pie dough, Pâte Sucrée, Pastry Cream, Cheesecake and Lemon Bars
You know you’re in a baking class when you hear phrases like “the proteins have suffered.” Our day three attempt at choux didn’t exactly come out right. Different teams had scaled different recipes and the team that scaled the choux immediately came under the spotlight. One of the first ways you can screw up baking is by not being precise. We, however, were not deterred and continued on to Pie dough.

Lab was pretty straight-forward and the hardest thing about it was dealing with my lab partners. Through-out the week I marveled at how difficult it was for many folks to simply follow directions. They also seemed to not grasp the flow of each day. The teacher every day in lab would demonstrate what we were going to make before we made it. If you tried to go ahead of her, you might find yourself lost or with questions. That is why I would simply read the recipe ahead of time and then wait for her to demonstrate the product before I jumped in.

At this point in the week I was partnered with the culinary student on one side of the table and Ms. Late and Mrs. X were partners on the other side. As Mrs. X was a home baker that thought she knew everything and then proceeded to screw up every one of their recipes each day and Ms. Late was perhaps the laziest baker I had ever encountered, they were a fine pair. Once again they decided to shoot ahead of the teacher and start on the next recipe. They asked me, “What do we do with the vanilla bean?”

I said, “If you wait for her to demonstrate, I bet you’ll find out.”

Mrs. X and Ms. Late deemed this to be a snotty remark and then proceeded to tell me what was wrong with me. When I asked them to be concrete Mrs. X couldn’t come up with anything but Ms. Late specified that on day two I said “pastry flour” in an abrasive tone.

I was taken back for a second. I had a moment where I struggled with old thoughts – I can’t get along with anyone, I’m a terrible manager, I hate people. Then I thought, wait a minute – this is ridiculous! After a long day, however, I couldn’t quite get together the words to explain to her how frustrated I was with her. Instead I kept my mouth shut and stifled a laugh. When I thought about it, it really was kind of funny.

Buddhism teaches you to embrace your enemy and see him or her as your greatest teacher; to use each encounter with someone you dislike as an opportunity to examine your ego and break down your arrogance. So that night I spent time reflecting on the incident. What she heard in my voice day two was “pastry flour, stupid.” The recipe was literally right in front of her yet she was asking me. The reality is I resented her laziness. I wasn’t the boss or even the team leader in this course, but people turned to me for guidance. Why? Because I work hard to be on top of it. What made me angry was that I wasn’t looking for the role and yet there I was acting the part. I just wanted to bake but when she asked for help I helped. I wasn’t smarter than her or probably even more competent than her. She had just figured out the fine art of getting other people to do her work for her and she saw me as an easy target – which, it seems, I am. Then instead of setting the boundary and telling her I was frustrated with her expecting me to catch her up when she was late or figure things out for her, I swallowed my anger and it leaked. Right into the pastry flour.

Day Five: Madeleines, Financiers, Marble Cake, Rustic Fruit Pie, Fresh Fruit Tart, Lemon bars and Cheesecake
The final day was all lab work and really about putting the finishing touches on a lot of the things we set up the day before, like the pie dough and Pâte Sucrée. It was also a day for me to practice not working so hard. I kept to myself, did the work I wanted to do, and left the rest to the others. And you know what? It worked. I was at peace.

The class is a great overview for beginners but a lot will be lost on you if you haven’t had much experience in the kitchen. I think it’s best for understanding the science of baking and practicing technique – which is what baking comes down to.

As for me, I learned to roll my own dough.

For all you geeky bakers who want more technical info, go here.