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.
Fails to Practice What It Preaches I was very dissapointed in this book. I really wanted to read about Baking Boot Camp. The diary format killed the book for me. I did not need to hear her whine about her classmates, I DON'T CARE how long she has been baking pies or making Challah bread. If her inner dialogue was reflected in the class no wonder she was not happy with the other participants.
After being told over and over that the measurments need to be done in weight and not volume....provided recipies give ONLY Volume measurments. Now if this book was written with the blessing of the CIA would you not share some of the original recipies with weighted measures?
The book could and should have been a great show piece for advertizing the CIA's Boot Camps. But I am not sure I would want to spend the time and money after reading this book!
Been there 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.
Getting to experience the CIA's Baking and Pastry boot camps. 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.
Baking Boot Camp 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.
Why no Weights? 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?
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