Customer Reviews

Baking Boot Camp: Five Days of Basic Training at The Culinary Institute of America

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`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.

I found the book extremely helpful and am very grateful for the sharing of professional tips and techniques. The author takes great pains to tell us that all the chefs she encountered at the CIA emphasised how important it is to measure all ingredients by weight rather than volume (cups). Then, what do we find, but the recipes are all in cups with no weights offered! How will the cooking/baking culture ever change if even this book does not practice what it preaches?

I attended the CIA pastry boot camp. First of all, the recipes in the book are NOT the CIA recipes. Don't think you're going to duplicate the CIA mudslide cookies, for example. Additionally, there are recipes in the book that are not made during the boot camps. I don't know where the author got them. Although I too had an extremely annoying, know-it-all type in my class, I think the author should have kept her snide remarks about fellow students out of the book. The products pictured in the book are NOT student made. There are typos, poor grammar and just generally it's a poorly written book. However-the boot camps are fun. The chefs are amazing and it's great to learn the techniques that they have perfected over many years.

What a great topic for a book, especially for those who would love to attend a CIA boot camp but cannot. Too bad the author spent so much time writing about herself. Like other reviewers, I found Ms. Goldstein to be supercilious and self-important. I could barely make it through her numerous references to herself as an "academic", her constant references to her curly hair, her critique of a lecturer's reference to Thoreau's phrase "faith in a seed" and her claim that the CIA should hire a food historian because the all knowing Ms. Goldstein disagrees that brioche is associated with the Brie region of France. More disturbing is her constant need to put down her fellow boot campers. There is no valid reason for her to criticize her fellow boot campers just as there is no valid reason for her to tell us how wonderful she is--a conclusion that was probably not shared by the other boot campers. It is not surprising that Ms. Goldstein's fellow baking boot campers responded with alarm when she disclosed to them she would be writing a book about her experience.

I also agree the recipes should have included weight measurements because each instructor stressed that all ingredients, even salt and eggs, should be weighed instead of using conventional measurements. It is worth reading despite the author's narcissism, but the book could have been much better.

I was excited to read this cookbook, but was disappointed by both the half of the book where the author describes her experiences at the boot camps and the recipes. The recipes were the greater disappointment.

I would love to do a CIA (cooking, not spies!) boot camp but it isn't in the budget. Reading this book would be the next best thing, or so I thought. Parts of the accounts of the author's experiences at the CIA's baking and pastry boot camps were very interesting and extremely helpful. But there is too much space spent on the author's feelings about her fellow boot campers and her assumptions of what the instructors think about her. I'd rather she had spent more time talking about the things the other teams baked than how they felt about each other.

The recipe section proved to be the biggest disappointment. On the first day of baking boot camp, the CIA instructor told them they would be measuring all their ingredients by weight, not volume. So I expected at least the flour and sugar, if not nearly all the ingerdients, would be listed by weight in the recipes. At the very least I thought there would be both weight and volume measurements because many home cooks do not have food scales. But none of the recipes had measurements by weight. There is a conversion table at the end but it is clear the recipes are not home sized versions of the CIA recipes because the volume measurements are too even. If they had sized the professional quantity recipes by weight and then converted them to volume, you would expect to see amounts like "2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons" but they are all even measurements. The reason to use weight, not volume, is that baking is a chemical science and variations in weight can change the results so one should not expect to get CIA quality results from these recipes. The CIA is the co-author of the book. If they did not want to give out their recipes, they should have declined to participate.

The other disappointment with the recipes is that some of the learning described in the class diary portion is not reflected in the recipes. In the beginning, the author described being disappointed that she and her partner used a different type of chocolate (bittersweet instead of semisweet) than was in the class recipe for pots de chocolate. But the recipe in the book calls for bittersweet, not the semisweet she said was in the CIA class manual. In the pies section, she quotes from an instructor email on why the apple pie recipe uses both corn starch and tapioca. But the apple pie recipe calls for neither (though the cherry pie recipes does).

On the plus side, there is a good selection of recipes for baked goods and pastry components. Just understand they are unlikely to be exactly the recipes taught at the CIA.

Having just finished a week coarse in Hyde Park at Culinary Boot Camp, I wondered if I would want to go back for the baking boot camp. After reading Darra Goldstein's account, I am ready. The first experience was wonderful and I am looking forward to going next April to further my culinary skills.

I just finished reading this book earlier this week and, like other reviewers, was pretty disappointed. I was hoping to learn a good deal more about the techniques and processes that the author learned and less about herself and her relationships with the other students. I was really surprised to read other reviews praising the writing style--I found the author to be amateurish and mostly annoying. Her fretting over using electric mixers, correction of food history, and critiquing of her classmates was just not what I was looking for when I picked out a book called "Baking Boot Camp."

One of the more interesting things that I've learnt about food is that there is a basic difference between cooking and baking. Cooking is a more intuitive process, where the ingredients and methods can be fiddled with and changed to suit the chef's whim. But baking is another creature entirely -- here formulas have to be adhered to, or else what the baker has is a disaster.

Longtime cookbook author Darra Goldstein decides to enter into that world of baking in this fun, insightful chronicle of two sessions of what is known as 'Boot Camp' at the top cooking school in America, known as the CIA -- The Culinary Institute of America. The boot camps are designed as week-long intensive cooking and baking classes, where the chefs and bakers of the CIA take a group of people, and show them the skills to help understand the techniques to create good food.

I had purchased another book that had chronicled the 'Boot Camp' process and didn't care for it much -- while I had enjoyed the recipes and techniques, the author's writing style and attitude was simply too annoying to read. So I was rather hesitant to purchase this volume. I should not have worried -- Goldstein is a delightful writer to read. She gives a book full of humour and fun, with light touches that help to make the topic accessible to the reader, and feel as though they are standing next to Goldstein as she creates rolls, napoleons and cookies.

Actually, Goldstein chronicles two CIA Boot Camp experiences -- the first one is Baking Boot Camp, the second is Pastry Boot Camp. Each one is five days long, and are open to anyone who can afford the time and fee, each one held at the CIA's main campus, located in Hyde Park, New York. Goldstein describes arriving at the campus, meeting her fellow students and instructor, and her own experiences in dealing with the hours, the routine, and the hectic pace. But she does it with a sense of humor, something that I really enjoyed reading about.

Each chapter takes on a topic of baking -- from the basics of creaming, sifting, the ingredients used and the theory behind the four base ingredients -- flour, sugar, fat and eggs -- that every bread and pastry is built around. Several sidebars discuss or show a technique, entitled What We Learned. Finally, each chapter ends with a description of the dinner at each of the specialty restaurants that are on the grounds of the CIA. While most of the first section was familiar, I enjoyed reading about Goldstein's experiences, and got to learn some of the finer points of making challah and piecrusts.

The second section covers pastry. It was here that I got to learn quite a few new things. While I've gotten confident handling breads, quick breads, and simple cakes and cookies, the art of working with puff pastry, custards, and showy desserts have always terrified me. However, the techniques and descriptions are very easy to follow, and should help to guide a novice pastry chef through some of the pitfalls.

At the end, there are all of the recipes gathered together in one section, with plenty of photographs, and a very easy to follow style to the layout. There are plenty of photographs, some that are ravishing to look at. I do recommend trying the Mudslide cookies -- they are fantastic!

Winding up, there is an index, and a handy conversion chart and guide to help.

The book is filled with plenty of photographs and recipes, all dished up in some really beautiful shots that made my mouth water. The area around the CIA is very familiar to me -- I live about a stone's throw away -- and yes, it's really as beautiful as the author hints that it is, and some days, if the wind is just right, there are tantalizing scents of baking and cooking wafting up the road where I live.

Best of all Goldstein doesn't take herself too seriously. She's brave enough to laugh at herself, and her writing style is friendly and fun to read. She has a real love for the culinary arts, and it shows in her work, and helps to not just instruct, but also to inspire the reader. I have several of her other cookbooks, and yes, they're all this good.

I happily give this book a vigorous thumbs up, and recommend it for anyone who wants to get a bit farther into the mysteries of baking. Four stars overall.

After reading this book several years ago thanks to my local library, I knew I wanted it for my own home cooking library. If you can't have a CIA education or someone skilled and knowledgeable to help you, but desire a detailed explanation of the many critical aspects of the chemistry involved in baking, then this book is a blessing or at least a start.

Having the advantage of being trained in a few professional kitchens over time, I appreciate the difficulty in translating the critical moments of deciding when each stage of a recipe is completed perfectly. Trying to do this with words and the limited dimensions offered in photographs is much more difficult. This book was like a mentor helping me develop each of the skills needed for the nice grouping of recipes included.

Aside from all the instruction and the great recipes I enjoyed learning about products as well as the day to day goings on in the top culinary school in the USA. Dara Goldstein made the journey both fun and interesting. I feel the only way you can advance your cooking and baking skills is if you develop an understanding of what is happening enough to remember the process and apply it to your own creations.

I am a pastry chef and found this books to have recipes that just don't work. example, Apple Strudel, to much filling and not enough phylo. so it broke. there are omissions and bad instructions for the first time baker who may not know how to fix a bad recipe. FYI: I would advise not to buy cook books that are written by chefs that have restaurants. Most always, the recipes are not the same ones they are famous for.