Baking Bootcamp at the CIA
A few years ago, I took a week long baking class at the Culinary Institute of America’s fabulous facility http://www.ciachef.edu/california/ in the Napa Valley . The building, called Greystone, was once the largest stone winery in the world. Its imposing stoniness is set in 22 inch walls (for keeping the wine barrels cool and safe) in 1889. Over a hundred years later, it was bought and fitted out as the west coast version of the Hudson Valley’s CIA.
My husband’s parents live in the Bay Area, so we visit often. My mother-in-law is a terrific cook, and both of us like baking. So a few years ago, we decided to take the CIA’s baking boot camp. It’s a week’s worth of classes designed to help people decide if they want to take the full year’s course. It cost about $700, so not to be sneezed at.
The ten or so students were from all over the west. Some were like us, not looking to make a career of baking, and others were on their way to becoming the next pastry chef at the French Laundry or Eleven Madison. The class registrar told my mother-in-law that she was the oldest student they’d ever had. She was 79.
Class started at 7:30 am every day and went until after 4 pm. It really was a boot camp. If we messed up, the chef instructors told us to make it again. We shared the giant cooking space, equipped with the most wonderful ovens and cooktops, including bread-baking ovens with internal spritzers and the ability to adjust top and bottom heating elements separately, with a class of Hyatt Hotel chefs, coming in for a continuing education class. They prepared lunch every day for us. For some reason, we weren’t asked to provide the bread or dessert.
Our curriculum included everything from learning about yeast and the effect of various protein contents on flour, to practicing two kinds of cake mixing methods (the foaming method or the rubbed dough method), to making several breads and flatbreads (including naan in a real tandoori fire oven). On Friday we finally got to the chocolate part. Oh, and we made some pies too. It was the buttermilk pie that I had to do over.
Here’s my mother-in-law, telling the instructor how it was done in the old country.
My mother-in-law telling the chef how it’s done in the old country.
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