Posted by Gerard Jones on May 25, 1997 at 16:40:49:
In Reply to: Re: Were have all the Pastry chefs gone posted by NEIL Sheldon CPC on May 21, 1997 at 22:55:12:
:
: : : would like to here from other pastry people out there.
: : OK, what would you like to hear? (g),
: : I run a small french bakery in Boston, I worked for many years in hotels (Ritz, Meridien) bakeries and restaurants and have been in business for 14 years now, baking for a lot longer than that.
: : Too many coming into the business now are taking courses and not doing the apprenticeships. Kinda sad, I have never had anyone approach me to serve an apprenticeship, its too easy to take classes.
: :
: : I used to hang out on CIS in the cooking forums but found it too unprofessional with a very ameteurish pecking order.
: : Whats a CPC ?
: CPC stands for certified pastry cook, it is granted by the american culinary federation. you are correct classes are easy I have three years at culinary school, and I wished I would have apprentised in a good pastry kitchen. would have saved me $20,000. but now Im the pastry chef at cafe pheonix in grinnell IA. thinking about learning the french language, and maybe going to Paris to some boulangeries. nice talking with you Chef Neil Sheldon CPC
Thats good, I find myself wishing I'd gone to school, its obvious you need both to round out the experience. My brother with his City and Guilds degree (British) always has the ready answer when I start flipping through a book such as Bo Friebergs.
Once when my croissants were baking very light blond color he solved the problem without even seeing them, I told him the dough was very rubbery , the croiss' wanted to unroll during baking and had almost no color, he said check the temp of the oven but seeing as the bread baked OK we eliminated that. He said the problem was the temp of the refrigerator, sure enough it was running too warm and burning off the sugar in the dough.
It woulda been sheer luck for me to figga that one out.
Forget France, they suck (g), come work with me and this French chick for a few days, we make all sorts of breads.
I'd go and get certifried but have that sinking feeling I'd flunk.!