Monday, January 30, 2017

The Culinary Bonus

Ah, the joys of having a son in culinary arts. It's not just that he cooks for us—he was doing that before he went to high school—but that we're learning things from him. Most recent example: I have been using the bread maker to make dough for bread and buns for years. But William passed on a little wisdom from culinary arts that changed the way I do it.

He told me that, in his class, the bread, particularly the baguettes, only get one rise. I'd always let the dough rise in the bread maker until it told me it was done, and then again in the oven (ours has a "proof" setting, a controlled room temperature for this very purpose). The texture was fine, but now we pull the dough out of the bread maker 30 to 40 minutes before the timer goes off and just do the proofing in the oven.

The texture is softer, denser, and much more uniform when we do it this way. Bonus!

Not only that, but when I'm teaching William how to make something, like my quick clam chowder (canned clams), I don't have to lead him through it. It's just "Dice the potatoes, boil them from cold, then make a roux, add a couple of cups of water, season it once you've got it smooth, add the clams with the juice, add half-and-half, and put the potatoes back in." He does it, and it's wonderful, maybe better than my own. Happy sigh!

Of course, the real advantage to William taking culinary arts is that he absolutely loves it. Even with all the cleaning and prep that he has to do, he looks forward every day to his class. Even today, when he didn't really need to be at school (it was finals make-up day and he didn't have anything to make up), he wanted to make sure he was in his first block to help prep for the restaurant that the program runs.

Any class that makes a sophomore in high school want to be in school more than out is perfect in my book!

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