Professional Baking Boot Camp: 5-Day Basic Training Course at The Culinary Institute of America | Learn Essential Baking Skills for Home Chefs & Pastry Enthusiasts

`baking Boot Camp' by The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and Darra Goldstein is a sequel to the delightful `culinary Boot Camp' by the same CIA and Martha Rose Shulman. Both writers are Julia Child awards winning cookbook writers, with Goldstein's speciality being ethnic Russian cuisine cookbooks and as an editor for a Russian cultural magazine in English. Both books chronicle the experiences of the authors' taking a 5-day CIA continuing education course. One major difference is that while the earlier book covers a single course, Goldstein's book covers two five day courses, one for baking and one for pastry, in spite of the suggestion on the book's subtitle that it covers only a single 5 day course.Like the earlier book, this is a fine meld of reference cookbook and culinary memoir, almost as if one took a Nick Malgieri cookbook and shuffled it together, page by page, with the Michael Ruhlman documentary work, `The Making of a Chef', with the difference that Ms. Goldstein is a far less detached observer than journalist Ruhlman.As I said in my review of the earlier book, anyone who is seriously considering baking as a career or even as a serious hobby should read this book from cover to cover. This is not so much for the baking advice, which is very good, but maybe not as good as the very best manuals on the subject. It is to familiarize one with the disciplines of baking, as exemplified by the regimens enforced by the CIA. It is not for nothing that these courses are called `boot camps'. While the instructors are not really as strict as they are with their associate degree and bachelor's degree students, they still impose a healthy discipline, starting with the legendary CIA emphasis on both being on time and the proper uniform, including the classic white blouse, houndstooth trousers (generally too big), white kerchief, and paper toque. And heaven help you if your hair falls out of the toque or the kerchief would not meet the approval of Auguste Escoffier.Like very few other `cookbooks' I can think of, this volume is really meant to be read from start to finish, or at least up to the end of Chapter 10, the end of the 10 days of the two boot camps. The first ten chapters are divided into three types of sections. The first is a diary of Ms. Goldstein's experiences outside the classroom, involving finding a parking space early in the morning, breakfast, lunch, and breaks in the many CIA restaurants and dining rooms, and chatting with fellow students. The second type of section is narratives of lectures and baking experiences. These sections are by far the most interesting, as they contain lots of incidental tips on how things are done which you may not find in the usual text or recipe. The third section type is double page sidebars with text and pictures describing particular techniques.While these classes are done for non-degree students, the recipes and techniques still come from the professional baking kitchen, using large commercial equipment, such as the 20 quart Hobart mixer (big brother to the 5 or 6 quart Kitchen-Aid) and recipes which are distinctly different from even the very best home baking. One example is the recipe for buttermilk biscuits. Even the best baking writers such as Nick Malgieri keep this very simple, following classic techniques of quick mixing and cutting. The CIA goes in for a more involved multiple dough folding technique, using some of the same principles used to make puff pastry (and yes, the book even includes a complete puff pastry recipe).Two of my more interesting discoveries were that the expert bread baking instructor did not like and warned against the new `rapid rise' yeasts and that making creams such as crème anglaise, pastry cream, and other custards and meringues were virtually as important to the pastry profession as making doughs (pastry!).This volume, like its earlier effort, is nicely illustrated, but not as expertly as I may have wished. The photographers seemed to turn blurry pictures into some kind of virtue, hopefully expressing the pace of the professional kitchen. It left me annoyed, especially when these pictures of `ambient activity' were presented with no captions. I also regretted not seeing the class picture, even though Ms. Goldstein was not happy with her appearance therein. On the other hand, the pictures of techniques and materials were expertly clear and reasonably well labeled, although they could have done a tad better than the `Clockwise, starting from the top, when the items are not close to a perfect clockfaced circle'.Small annoyances aside, for the price, both volumes are superb introductions to the skills and disciplines of these culinary specialities.Both are a `must buy' for foodies and aspiring cooks.