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

~ The Culinary Institute of America (Author), (Author)
Key Phrases: apricot glaze, chantilly cream, blitz puff pastry, Chef Paul, Chef Kate, Chef Eric (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“It divulges tricks of the trade…”(Scotland On Sunday, March 2007)

Product Description

The Culinary Institute of America's tremendously popular Boot Camp courses help food and baking enthusiasts take their skills to a whole new level, offering hands-on, intensive instruction with some of the world's most talented chef-instructors.

In Baking Boot Camp, Julia Child Award-winning cookbook author Darra Goldstein takes you along as she embarks on two demanding Boot Camp courses, Baking and Pastry, where the fatigues are chef's whites and the weapons of choice are whisks, piping bags, and a bench scraper. Goldstein chronicles progress through each day of each course, bringing to life the intensity, the rigor, and the camaraderie that set Boot Camps apart from other cooking classes. Along the way, she reveals the tips and tricks of baking and pastry pros, sharing their fascinating insights with us on everything from the importance of weighing all ingredients to the secrets of perfect puff pastry. Throughout the book, more than 100 photographs by award-winning photographer Ben Fink vividly capture the excitement of the program.

Learn alongside Goldstein and her fellow students as they watch demonstrations, practice new skills, and receive critiques from their exacting instructors. You'll discover the hands-on skills and secrets you need to perfect your cookies, pies, cakes, and breads, as you build the know-how and confidence to tackle more demanding creations such as profiteroles, eclairs, mousses, and souffles. To help you put these lessons to work in your own kitchen, the book includes nearly eighty delicious Boot Camp recipes - everything you need to start using professional techniques and embark on a lifetime of baking success.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (February 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764572792
• ISBN-13: 978-0764572791
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #132,256 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Taste of Baking Skills and Discipline. Buy It!, February 20, 2007

By	B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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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.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Why no Weights?, April 22, 2007

By	Annie MacDonald "AnnieMacD" (Applecross, Scotland, UK) - See all my reviews

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?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Topic-Annoying Author, May 4, 2009

By	Susan Chelsea - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.